A University of Melbourne researcher, Dr. Tyrone Lavery, has discovered a rare example of parallel evolution in bats living in the Solomon Islands. Two groups of leaf-nosed bats with vastly different body sizes, initially thought to be separate species, were found to have very similar DNA. The larger bats, named H. dinops, evolved from the smaller bat, H. diadema, independently on different islands. This phenomenon of parallel evolution arising from separated populations of the same species has rarely been observed before and is believed to be the first time documented in mammals in real-time. The larger bats are thought to be evolving to hunt bigger prey, showing unique evolutionary patterns.
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-species-sizes-rare-evolution-action.html