High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Parallel evolution is the development of a similar trait in different not closely related species (that is in species of a different clade), but descending from the same ancestor. For a particular trait, proceeding in each of two lineages from a specified ancestor to a later descendant, parallel and convergent evolutionary trends can be strictly defined and clearly distinguished from one another.[2] When both descendants are similar in a particular respect, evolution is defined as parallel if the ancestors considered were also similar, and convergent if they were not.