2026/07/23 by Jonah Dominguez, Timothy Chambers, Austen Elizabeth Conlon +4
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Social Sciences · Environmental Science · #Plant and animal studies #Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies #Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2026.112008
The Hawaiian Archipelago faces some of the highest rates of extinction globally. Many native plants and their pollinators have gone extinct or are at risk, and invasive species are embedded in most pollinator networks. Hesperomannia oahuensis is a critically endangered aster, with the wild population reduced to one mature individual and one immature individual. Since 2010 four reintroductions were established where mature plants are reliant on hand-pollination to produce viable seed set. In an attempt to quantify the possibility of further reintroduction without need for hand-pollination, we deployed game cameras at one reintroduction site to observe pollinators at the mature individuals to document any instances of potential pollination by native or invasive birds. We found that Hesperomannia is primarily interacted with by native pollinators, bucking trends of non-native reliance, and indicating that there still remain some native-native interactions within the Hawaiian ecosystem.