BENNING 2002

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


The Hawaiian honeycreepers (Drepanidae) represent a superbillustration of evolutionary radiation, with a single colonizationevent giving rise to 19 extant and at least 10 extinct species[Curnutt, J. & Pimm, S. (2001) Stud. Avian Biol. 22, 15–30]. They alsorepresent a dramatic example of anthropogenic extinction. Cropand pasture land has replaced their forest habitat, and humanintroductions of predators and diseases, particularly of mosquitoesand avian malaria, has eliminated them from the remaining lowandmid-elevation forests. Landscape analyses of three highelevationforest refuges show that anthropogenic climate changeis likely to combine with past land-use changes and biologicalinvasions to drive several of the remaining species to extinction,especially on the islands of Kauai and Hawaii.


Link: http://planet.uwc.ac.za/nisl/Invasives/Assignment1/Benning.pdf


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Dr Richard Knight Co-ordinator: National Information Society Learnerships - Ecological Informatics
Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology
University of the Western Cape
Private Bag X17
Bellville 7535

Phone 27 + 21 + 959 3940
Fax 27 + 21 + 959 1237

Email Rknight@uwc.ac.za
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