The Lost Manu Research Initiative is a science and conservation program focused on endangered bird-plant interactions in Hawaiʻi. The initiative integrates field ecology, museum collections, 3D modeling, camera-based behavioral research, and applied conservation partnerships to understand how bird declines and extinctions reshape ecosystems, and how those relationships can be restored.
Built through place-based collaborations across Hawaiʻi, Lost Manu connects ecological theory with conservation practice. Its work measures the functional consequences of bird loss for pollination and ecological network structure, while developing science to inform restoration of rare species and their interactions.
The Hawaiian Islands are among the most evolutionarily distinctive ecosystems on Earth, and also among the most heavily altered. Over millions of years, isolation produced tightly linked bird and plant relationships, especially among nectar-feeding honeycreepers and lobelioids. In recent centuries, that system has unraveled. Dozens of endemic bird species are gone, and most of those that remain are now endangered or declining. Many of these birds were the primary pollinators in these forests. As they disappear, those ecological roles disappear with them, and the processes that structure these ecosystems begin to break down. What remains is a partial system, where many of the interactions that shaped plant evolution are no longer present or clearly understood.
This raises an important challenge for conservation. How do we reconstruct ecological relationships that are no longer visible in the present system? The Lost Manu Research Initiative approaches this by treating extinct interactions as testable hypotheses. We draw on museum collections, ecological data, and new analytical tools to evaluate which plant and bird species likely interacted, and how those interactions functioned. This includes trait-based analyses and three-dimensional modeling approaches developed in collaboration with the Burke Museum and the Behavioral Ecophysics Lab. These methods allow us to quantify how well bird bills and floral structures match, something that cannot be observed directly for extinct species. By combining historical specimens with modern analysis, this work identifies which interactions structured Hawaiian ecosystems in the past and which may still be recoverable today.
Dr. Samuel B. Case is an ecologist studying how extinction, invasion, and environmental change reshape plant-animal interactions. He leads the Lost Manu Research Initiative and is affiliated with the University of Washington, the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project, and the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum.
Mahalo to the organizations and partners who support this work, including the Burke Museum, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project, The Nature Conservancy, the Plant Extinction Prevention Program, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Lyon Arboretum, and the Puʻu Kukui Watershed Preserve, as well as to the undergraduate researchers at the University of Washington, field technicians, and volunteers whose time and effort make this work possible. Thanks also to the staff, land managers, and stewards who support access and care for the ʻāina across Hawaiʻi.