Q.The wings of birds and butterflies is an example of :

Bird wings and butterfly wings look and function alike (both enable flight) but evolved independently from completely different structures in unrelated ancestral lineages, making them analogous organs -- the defining sign of convergent evolution.

Convergent evolution occurs when unrelated organisms, facing similar environmental pressures or functional needs, independently evolve superficially similar structures that serve the same function but arise from different developmental/anatomical origins -- these structures are called analogous organs. Bird wings develop from the vertebrate forelimb skeleton (homologous to a human arm), covered with feathers, whereas butterfly (insect) wings are thin, membranous outgrowths of the exoskeleton, supported by a network of veins, and have no relationship at all to a vertebrate limb. Since birds and insects belong to entirely different, distantly related evolutionary lineages, the shared ability to fly using 'wings' arose independently in each group under similar selective pressure (the advantage of flight), not from a common winged ancestor …

Bird and butterfly wings are analogous structures produced by convergent evolution -- similar function, independently evolved, from different origins.

Convergent evolution occurs when unrelated organisms independently evolve similar (analogous) structures because they face similar selection pressures/functional demands, even though the underlying structures have entirely different developmental and evolutionary origins. Bird wings develop from the vertebrate forelimb skeleton, while insect wings are outgrowths of the exoskeleton (cuticle) -- structurally unrelated, yet both serve flight. This contrasts with divergent evolution (where a common ancestral structure diversifies into different forms/functions, producing homologous organs, e.g. the forelimbs of diffe …