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Homoplasy

Similarity between species that is *not* due to inheritance from a common ancestor - a coincidence arrived at independently, not a signature passed down. Homoplasy is the great enemy of tree-building, because it looks exactly like true evidence of kinship. It arises through convergent evolution (distant lineages finding the same solution), through parallel evolution, or through reversal (a derived trait returning to the ancestral state). Telling homoplasy from true homology is the whole art of cladistics.