As life's diversity demonstrates, nature has a pretty large toolbox for designing adaptations. While in many ways an efficient builder, it often reuses blueprints, even if not starting with the same tools. Analogous wing structures in bird and bat suggest a why-mess-with-success ethos. New World cacti and desert-dwelling Euphorbiaceae in the Old World share protective spines and photosynthesizing stems even though the last common ancestor predates such modifications.
Beyond structural adaptations, researchers are investigating convergent evolution at the molecular level, and this may allow for broader comparisons even between plants and animals. Both, of course, share the building blocks and fundamental biochemistry that evolved before the two kingdoms presumably diverged from common single-celled ancestors. But with their radically different cell structures, plants and animals were thought to have pursued largely independent evolutionary routes. Such disparity was reflected in the lack of interaction between the respective research communities.
But much is ...
