Evolutionary ecology and radiation of Hawaiian passerine birds

The Hawaiian islands contain the most spectacular variety of landbirds ever discovered on remote oceanic islands. The Hawaiian honeycreepers, having evolved from a presumably single founding species of cardueline finch, comprise most of this avifauna. Birds from at least three other families of passerines and five families of non-passerines also radiated in Hawaii. Recent discoveries of a fossil avifauna indicate that most radiations were more extensive than previously thought. Classical analysis of the radiation of Hawaiian birds, especially the honeycreepers, focused on characters related to acquisition of food. Recent studies of bill size and shape in relation to food resources, and of foraging mode in relation to interspecific competitors, provide models of how divergence in diet and/or bill morphology might have evolved. Studies of geographic variation among subspecies on different islands and among populations within islands have revealed extensive divergence in characters such as sexual chromatism, nest sites and nest morphology.