Red panda and giant panda genomes show convergent evolution

Enlarge (credit: Aachen Zoo (Wikimedia Commons))

Even though bats and birds didn't evolve from a common ancestor, they both have wings. This phenomenon, called convergent evolution, sees species in similar ecological niches evolving similar adaptations—not because they’re closely related, but because they’re faced with the same evolutionary problems.

Giant pandas and red pandas are a great example of this. They diverged around 43 million years ago, with giant pandas in the family Ursidae along with other bears, and red pandas as the lonely living representatives of the family Ailuridae, more closely related to ferrets (take a look at giant pandas and red pandas on this zoomable tree of life). But both kinds of panda are unique among the carnivores in that they're exclusively herbivores.

That lifestyle choice has apparently left similar marks on their genomes, as a team of researchers found when they sequenced the red panda genome.