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"A HOMOPLASY is a character shared by a set of species but not present in their common ancestor. A good example is the evolution of the eye which has originated independently in many different species. When this happens it is sometimes called a convergence. Homoplasies can be compared with homologies, which are characters shared by a set of species and are present in their common ancestor." https://lnkd.in/dcMj-xb View in LinkedIn

SMART PROTEINS. "Scientists ... have taken proteins from nerve cells and used them to create a "smart" material that is extremely sensitive to its environment. This marriage of materials science and biology could give birth to a flexible, sensitive coating that is easy and cheap to manufacture in large quantities." https://lnkd.in/eYsu4hB View in LinkedIn

DECEPTIVE SIMILARITY. "By the same token, the arborescent growth habit of many present-day and extinct vascular plants which is achieved by virtue of secondary tissues produced by the vascular and cork cambia (e.g. Lepidodendron, Calamites and Pinus) is mimicked by monocot and fern species lacking cambia (e.g. Cocos nucifera and Cyathea medullaris)." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/85/4/411.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

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BELOW THE SURFACE. "General appearance and size also belie very different tissue constructions and developmental capacities. The non-vascular blade-stipe-holdfast architecture of some marine brown algae is constructed with an intercalary meristem (e.g. Agarum and Macrocystis) and yet is remarkably similar to the leaf-stem-root configuration of the vascular land plants." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/85/4/411.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

ACELLULAR GIANTS. "Some acellular (siphonous) species, like those of Caulerpa, can attain body lengths in excess of 20 m and a general morphology strikingly reminiscent of the rhizomatous growth habit of the vascular land plant without benefit of multicellularity." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/85/4/411.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

ALGAL CLADES. "It is commonplace to find plants with filamentous, membranous, foliar, tubular, kelp-like, and coralline life forms in each of the red, green, and brown algal clades." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/85/4/411.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

LOOKS ARE DECEPTIVE. "However, it is strikingly evident that the general appearance, size, or growth form of plants cannot be used to distinguish the various lineages." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/85/4/411.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

GENESIS. "These and other criteria support the generally held view that each algal lineage traces its ancestry back to a unicellular ancestral organism, that colonial and multi-cellular life forms have evolved independently many times, that the land plants (embryophytes) and the charophycean algae share a last common ancestor, and that the embryophytes are a monophyletic group." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/85/4/411.full.pdf View in LinkedIn