Juvenile i`iwi detected in lower elevations of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
The Hawaiian islands are home to a diverse array of plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Among the most famous of these are the spectacular Hawaiian honeycreepers, a group that evolved from a single flock of ancestral finches into at least 54 unique species. Unfortunately, the same isolation that fostered such dramatic adaptive radiation left Hawaiian species vulnerable. Under the onslaught of alien species predation and competition, habitat degradation, and introduced infectious diseases and parasites, most of the surviving honeycreepers have become largely confined to higher elevations. Intact habitat exists above the warm-weather range of deadly introduced avian malaria ( Plasmodium relictum ), and its mosquito vector ( Culex quinquefasciatus ).