Buckley et al, 2008 did a phylogenic study that involved the endangered Lord Howe Island stick insect, Dryococelus australis (Phasmatodea: Phasmatidae), a species that was previously thought extinct. Dryococelus australis is placed in the subfamily Eurycanthinae, along with the genera Eurycantha,  which has a mostly Australasian distribution around New Guinea and surrounding islands.

The study used two sections of DNA from both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA to compare the relationships between  various subfamilies and genera that were thought to be closely related to D. australis. They found that whilst the genera Eurycantha is morphologically (its body structure) similar to D. australis, they are only distantly related. One of the reasons that Dryococelus and Eurycantha were previously thought to be closely related was that both genera looked very similar and had unusually large spines on their hind legs. Now it seems that these leg spines evolved independently of each other; an example of convergent evolution.

You can read the whole article online with images of the leg spines and a phylogenetic tree.

Reference:

Buckley, T.R., Attanayake, D. and Bradler, S. (2008) Extreme convergence in stick insect evolution: phylogenetic placement of the Lord Howe Island tree lobster. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 16th December [Online] Available at: http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/g622w01455v03763/ [Accessed 25th Hanuary 2009]