Located some 2,400 miles (4,000 km) from the nearest continental shore, the Hawaiian Islands are the most isolated group of islands on the globe. The plant and animal life of the Hawaiian archipelago is first the result of early, very infrequent colonizations by arriving species and the slow evolution of those species—in isolation from the rest of the world's flora and fauna—over a period of at least 70 million years. As a consequence, Hawai'i is home to a large number of endemic species. Indeed, the radiation of species described by Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands, and so critical to the formulation of his ideas leading to the Theory of Evolution, is far exceeded in the more isolated Hawaiian Islands. Map of the Hawaiian Islands, a chain of islands that stretches 2,400 km in a northwesterly direction from the southern tip of the Island of Hawai‘i. ... In biology and ecology endemic means exclusively native to a place or biota, in contrast to cosmopolitan or one of various ways of being not native (e. ... In biology, a species is a kind of organism. ... In his lifetime Charles Darwin gained international fame as a controversial and influential scientist. ... NASA Satellite photo of the Galápagos archipelago. ... A phylogenetic tree of all living things, based on rRNA gene data, showing the separation of the three domains, bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, as described initially by Carl Woese. ...

The relatively short time that the existing main islands of the archipelago have been above the surface of the ocean (less than 10 million years) is not the time period available for biological colonization and evolution in the archipelago. High, volcanic islands have existed in these waters far longer, extending in a chain to the northwest, once mountanous islands now reduced to submerged banks and coral atolls. Midway Atoll, for example, formed as a volcanic island some 28 million years ago. Kure Atoll, a little further to the northwest, is near the Darwin Point—defined as waters of a temperature that allows coral reef development to just keep up with isostatic sinking. And extending back in time before Kure, an even older chain of islands spreads northward nearly to the Aleutian Islands; these former islands, all north of the Darwin Point, are now completely submerged as the Emperor Seamounts. Fanning Atoll (Tabuaeran) is a typical, small to moderate-sized atoll located in the central Pacific Ocean. ... The flag of the US is used on the Midway Islands Orthographic projection centred over midway Midway Atoll (also known as Midway Island or Midway Islands, Hawaiian: Pihemanu) is a 6. ... Kure Atoll or Ocean Island (Hawaiian: Kānemiloha‘i) lies some 55 miles beyond Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands at 178°20′W 28°25′N. The International Date Line lies approximately 100 miles to the west. ... Isostasy is a term used in Geology to refer to the state of gravitational equilibrium between the Earths lithosphere and asthenosphere such that the tectonic plates float at an elevation which depends on their thickness and density. ... Looking down the Aleutians from an airplane. ... The Emperor Seamounts are a chain of seamounts (submerged volcanic mountains) extending from the northwestern Hawaiian Islands (see Kure and Midway atolls) in a northwesterly direction until approximately 170º east longitude where they trend abruptly northward towards the tip of the Aleutian Islands and the Kamchatka Peninsula. ...

There are other factors as well. The islands are well known for the remarkable diversity of environments that occur on a high mountain in a trade winds field. On a single island, the climate can differ around the coast from dry tropical (< 20 in or 500 mm annual rainfall) to wet tropical; and up the slopes from tropical rainforest (> 200 in or 5000 mm per year) through a temperate climate into alpine conditions of coldness and dryness. And the rain climate impacts on soil development, which largely determines ground permeability, which effects the distribution of streams, wetlands, and wet places—and on and on and on. The trade winds are a pattern of wind found in bands around the Earths equatorial region. ...

Distance—remoteness—is a filter. And of those germs of life that occasionally made it through, how many found their way into a suitable microclimate? Whether a seed or spore attached to a lost migrating bird's feather or an insect falling out of the high winds, put there by a storm in its homeland—of these, how many found a place to survive and whatever else was needed to reproduce? This narrowing of the gene pool meant that at the very beginning the population of a colonizing species was a bit different from that of the far away contributing population. And now, in these islands, the rules for survival are not the same. There are different competitors, or maybe none; perhaps no predators either. Distances are compressed, and yet over those distances: a great variety of suitable and unsuitable conditions. Natural selection—different environmental factors working on a skewed gene pool—leading each founding population slowly away from clear identity with that in the old homeland, enhancing characters that contribute to survival, dropping those that do not. Natural selection is the process by which biological individuals that are endowed with favorable or deleterious traits end up reproducing more or less than other individuals that do not possess such traits. ...

And what of the neighboring island? Another filter; another separating divide.

Arrival of Humans

Human contact, first by Polynesians and later by Europeans, has had a significant impact. Both the Polynesians and Europeans cleared native forests and introduced non-indigenous species for agriculture (or by accident), driving many endemic species to extinction. Fossil finds in caves, lava tubes, and sand dunes have revealed an avifauna that once had an endemic eagle, two raven-size crows, several bird-eating owls, and giant ducks known as moa-nalos. Polynesia (from Greek, poly = many and nesi = island) is a large grouping of over 1,000 islands in the central and southern Pacific Ocean. ... This article is about the continent. ... Alternate meanings: Cave (disambiguation) This article is about natural caves; for artificial caves used as dwellings, such as those in north China, see yaodong. ... Lava tubes are natural conduits through which lava travels beneath the surface of a lava flow. ... Genera Several, see below. ... Species See text The true crows are in the genus Corvus; they are large Passerine birds. ... Families Strigidae Tytonidae An owl is any of some 200+ species of solitary, mainly nocturnal birds of prey in the order Strigiformes. ... † See also Diving duck, Dabbling duck The Moa-nalos; are an extinct group of aberrant ducks that used to live on the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific. ...

Today, many of the remaining endemic species of plants and animals in the Hawaiian Islands are considered endangered, and some critically so. Plant species are particularly at risk: out of a total of 2690 plant species, 946 are non-indigenous with 800 of the native species listed as endangered. [1]

A partial list of endemic species of Hawai‘i

Note that, simply because of the relatively small area involved, many Hawaiian species are considered threatened even when at their normal population levels.

• Nene (Branta sandvicensis) - vulnerable
• Po'ouli (Melamprosops phaeosoma) - critically endangered
• Yellow hibiscus (Hibiscus brackenridgei) - endangered
• Loulu – (Pritchardia fan palms)
• Snail-eating caterpillar

Binomial name Branta sandvicensis (Vigors, 1833) The Hawaiian Goose or NÄ“nÄ“, Branta sandvicensis, is a species of goose endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. ... Binomial name Melamprosops phaeosoma Casey & Jacobi, 1974 The Poouli (Melamprosops phaeosoma) is an extinct bird that is endemic to Hawai‘i. ... The ma‘o hau hele is the state flower of Hawai‘i The Genus Hibiscus includes some 200 species, seven of which are regarded as native Hawaiian hibiscus. ... Species About 24-40 species, including: Pritchardia affinis Pritchardia gaudichaudii Pritchardia lanigera Pritchardia martii - loulu hiwa Pritchardia munroi Pritchardia pacifica Pritchardia remota Pritchardia viscosa The genus Pritchardia (family Arecaceae) consists of between 24-40 species of fan palms (Arecaceae tribe Corypheae) found on tropical Pacific Ocean islands in Fiji, Samoa... Binomial name Hyposmocoma molluscivora (Rubinoff, 2005) The Snail Eating Caterpillar, Hyposmocoma molluscivora, is a Hawaiian moth whose larvae are predators, capturing snails in their silk, much like a hunting spiders web, and then crawling inside the snails shell to eat it alive. ...

See also

• Endemic birds of Hawaii

This article is one of a series providing information about endemism among birds in the Worlds various zoogeographic zones. ...

External links

• Flora of the Hawaiian Islands from the Smithsonian Institution
• Article on invasive species in Hawaii from the U.S. Geological Survey
• Hawaii's endemic birds from the U.S. Geological Survey
• Online multimedia Encyclopedia of Flora and Fauna of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve from NOAA