The Lost Manu Research Initiative is an independent science and conservation program focused on endangered bird-plant interactions in Hawaiʻi. Founded and led by Dr. Samuel B. Case, the initiative integrates field ecology, museum collections, 3D modeling, camera-based behavioral research, and applied conservation partnerships to study how bird declines and extinctions reshape ecosystems, and how those relationships might 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, seed dispersal, trait matching, and ecological network structure, while developing science that can inform restoration of rare species and their interactions.
Dr. Samuel B. Case is an ecologist studying how extinction, invasion, and environmental change reshape plant-animal interactions. Trained initially through bird-focused research, his work expanded in Hawaiʻi into a broader fascination with plants, ecological interactions, and the ways species loss reorganizes entire living systems. His research examines how ecological relationships persist, reorganize, or break down, and how those systems might be restored.
Dr. Case’s interest in plant-animal interactions began in Tasmania, where he studied the endangered forty-spotted pardalote and discovered a novel foraging behavior where birds mined for eucalyptus exudates. He later completed his PhD at the University of Wyoming in collaboration with the Hawaiʻi VINE Project, where he studied seed dispersal by introduced birds in Hawaiʻi and developed a deeper interest in trait-based mechanisms underlying novel interactions, ecological replacement, and the functional consequences of species loss. This research was conducted under an awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP).
While conducting research at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Dr. Case developed the conceptual foundation for what would later become the Lost Manu Research Initiative. Working with extinct bird specimens, he began formulating research on trait matching between Hawaiian nectar-feeding birds and lobelioids and established a broader framework integrating field, museum, and modeling perspectives to study the ecological consequences of bird extinction in Hawaiʻi. He conducted postdoctoral research in the Behavioral Ecophysics Lab at the University of Washington and the Burke Museum through a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (NSF PRFB), where he continued research on Hawaiian bird-plant interactions.
Following the fellowship, Dr. Case launched the Lost Manu Research Initiative as an independent, place-based science and conservation program in Hawaiʻi. Dr. Case is currently based on Maui, where he works as a Research Scientist through the University of Washington and as an Avian Research Specialist with the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project, contributing to ʻAlalā recovery efforts. He is also affiliated with the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum.
Email inquiries: sam.case24 @ gmail.com
