Interactions of climate change with biological invasions and land use in the Hawaiian Islands: Modeling the fate of endemic birds using a geographic information system.

Abstract

The Hawaiian honeycreepers (Drepanidae) represent a superb illustration of evolutionary radiation, with a single colonization event giving rise to 19 extant and at least 10 extinct species [Curnutt, J. & Pimm, S. (2001) Stud. Avian Biol. 22, 15-30]. They also represent a dramatic example of anthropogenic extinction. Crop and pasture land has replaced their forest habitat, and human introductions of predators and diseases, particularly of mosquitoes and avian malaria, has eliminated them from the remaining low- and mid-elevation forests. Landscape analyses of three high-elevation forest refuges show that anthropogenic climate change is likely to combine with past land-use changes and biological invasions to drive several of the remaining species to extinction, especially on the islands of Kauai and Hawaii.