One of the things I've been thinking about doing in this new version of the blog is a series of posts on the biology of the Hawaiian Islands. The designation of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a National Monument earlier this week gave me both a kick in the right direction, and a geographical starting point for the series.
In the next couple of days, I'll get the series started. The first post or two will discuss some general features of the geological history of the islands, and how that relates to the historical biology of the islands. With any luck, I should be able to convince you of something that is well-known in evolutionary biology circles (at least those with a Hawaiian focus): if Darwin's voyage had taken him to the Hawaiian Islands instead of the Galapagos, he probably would have figured things out a lot sooner. Once the basics are taken care of, I'll start looking at the individual islands. Instead of doing things in the usual order and starting with the Big Island, I'm going to go back to my paleontological roots, and start at the beginning, with the oldest of the islands - Kure Atoll.
I'm going to try to make this series a twice-a-week feature, with posts appearing on Mondays and Thursdays. I won't promise to stick to that exactly, but that's the goal. So watch this space - the first post in the series will appear on Wednesday.
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Give us accounts of what introduced species do to the native fauna too. In particular I liked that mongoose story you told me when I visited. I need more cautionary tales!
I'll be reading. Some focus on the pre- and post human arrival ecology, and how the introduced species from different continents are interacting, would be nice. Flightless geese. Freshwater fish, native (if any) and imported. And if you want to get speculative you could try speculating about the future biology of the Hawaiian Islands...