Hawaiian birds

Abstract

Hawaii's 132 islands, reefs, and shoals extend 1,523 miles from the southernmost island of Hawaii to the northernmost islands at Kure Atoll. The northernmost islands, now eroded almost to sea level, are about 27 million years old, whereas the still-forming island of Hawaii is only about 750,000 years old. The Hawaiian Islands are the most isolated in the world and, as such, have developed many species and subspecies of plants and animals found nowhere else. the arrival of few ancestral species and the isolation of the islands, with their varying ages, elevations, climates, and microhabitats, were ideal for creating this great endemic biota through adaptive radiation.