A new study evaluates conservation actions that could save the iconic Hawaiian Honeycreeper bird, also known as the “Iiwi,” providing land managers with guidance on how to save this important pollinator. The study demonstrates how the movement of Iiwi across the slopes of Hawaii’s volcanos in search of nectar from flowers can increase their risk of contracting disease and dying.
A new study evaluates conservation actions that could save the iconic Hawaiian Honeycreeper bird, also known as the “Iiwi,” providing land managers with guidance on how to save this important pollinator. The study demonstrates how the movement of Iiwi across the slopes of Hawaii’s volcanos in search of nectar from flowers can increase their risk of contracting disease and dying.
Iiwi are highly susceptible to introduced avian malaria, which is transmitted by a tropical mosquito that only occurs at low to mid-elevations of Hawaii. Iiwi breed only in high-elevation forests where the temperatures are too cool for the mosquito to occur, but their flights to find flowering trees can take them to where diseases occur.
“Iiwi evolved over millennia to track flowering trees up and down the slopes of Hawaii’s volcanos. Their flights to seek out blooming flowers allowed them to thrive across the Hawaiian Islands in the past,” said Dr. Eben Paxton, co-author of the study and researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey. “Today, however, with avian disease rampant at low and mid-elevations of the islands, these movements could lead to their extinction.”
Warming temperatures are helping mosquitoes and the diseases they carry to move into increasingly higher elevation mountain forests, leading to increased contacts with Iiwi. As a result, Iiwi have gone from being one of the most common native birds in Hawaii over 100 years ago, to now being a species limited to remote forests and in danger of extinction.
Continue reading at USGS.
Photo via USGS.
