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 The
biology of Hawai'i — the environments and the organisms
— is extraordinary, and offers unique opportunities for
research and graduate education.
 Hawai‘i,
a group of small islands in a tropical ocean (the only tropical
state in the country), is an outstanding location for marine
biology. The islands are fringed by extensive coral reefs
and a variety of other marine habitats, and are the country’s
gateway to the rest of the Indo-Pacific region. This access
— unmatched elsewhere in the U.S. if not the world —
to an ocean-wide diversity of marine animals and environments
long has places Hawai‘i at the forefront of research
in marine biology.
 The
extreme isolation of the islands, together with their great
diversity of habitats — ranging, despite the small area,
from rich coral reefs to freezing alpine barrens, from the
wettest spot on earth to virtual deserts —  have
produced a unique, wonderful biota. While some major groups
of animals are nearly or entirely absent from the native fauna,
other groups have undergone extraordinary evolutionary radiations.
As a result, the great majority of native species are endemic,
found nowhere else in the world. Many have evolved forms or
functions quite unlike those of their relatives elsewhere;
carnivorous caterpillars and “woodpecker” honeycreepers
are among the more striking examples. Hawai‘i thus is
an outstanding “natural laboratory of evolution”,
presenting exceptional opportunities to study not only the
evolutionary processes responsible for this unique fauna,
but also the ecological relationships within the unusual communities
resulting from the absences and proliferations of different
groups.
 The
native biology of Hawai‘i, unfortunately, also is one
of the most threatened in the world, constituting an exceptional
“laboratory of extinction”. The isolated island
setting has made the native biota extremely susceptible to
habitat destruction and invasive species. As a result, despite
representing only a very small part the land area of the U.S.,
Hawai‘i has the majority of the country’s recorded
extinctions and of its endangered species. The opportunities
in Hawai‘i for conservation biology research and action
thus are plentiful, and pressing.
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