Researchers in Hawai’i have described 10 new species and seven new genera of moths, highlighting how much remains unknown about the Pacific archipelago’s biodiversity.
Hawai’i is home to a large number of endemic species, plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Discovery of a new species is so common, “nobody turns their head,” study co-author Daniel Rubinoff, an entomologist with the University of Hawaiʻi, told Mongabay in a video call. He said finding a new genus is considered “kind of interesting, but to find so many really reflects how poorly known Hawaii’s fauna still is.”
Genus is a broader grouping than species, so species in different genera typically diverged much earlier in their evolutionary history than species of the same genus.
“Hawaiʻi is a world-renowned laboratory for evolution ,” lead author Kyhl Austin of the University of Hawai’i said in a press release. “By identifying these seven new genera, we are showing that these insects crossed thousands of miles of open ocean to reach Hawai’i far more frequently than we ever imagined.”
Karl Magnacca, an entomologist with the O‘ahu Army Natural Resources Program, not involved with the study told Mongabay in an email that “this is a really important contribution, as many of our native insect groups haven’t been looked at in around 100 years.”
In their search for new moths, researchers examined century-old museum collections and conducted field surveys in remote areas. They combined detailed anatomic examination with high-resolution imaging and genetic testing to reveal a hidden diversity of moths.
Among the discoveries is Paalua leleole, a species in which the female moths appear unable to fly. Several of the new moths were named to honor Hawai’ian culture, including Iliahia lilinoe, named for Lilinoe, the goddess of mists on the Haleakalā volcano, on the island of Maui.
Researchers also described six new species in the new genus Iliahia, named for its host plant, ʻiliahi, the Hawaiian name for sandalwood (Santalum spp.), a tree famous for its fragrant wood. Sandalwood was devastated in Hawai’i in the early 19th century in the Sandalwood Wars. Hawiian kings “forced people to go up into the woods and cut out all the sandalwood,” Rubinoff said. The wood was traded to the English for guns and cannons and ultimately exported to China.
As a result, sandalwood became rarer, as did the moths that depended on them. Today, one such sandalwood-dependent moth, I. pahulu, is considered critically endangered, as it is only known to exist in a small stand of 30 sandalwood trees on the island of Lānaʻi, the press release notes.
Some of the new species, which were described from museum collections, are already considered extinct, since they haven’t been seen in the wild in more than 100 years.
The discoveries are a testament to Hawai’i’s abundant endemic biodiversity and fragility, Rubinoff said. “We are naming species just as they are disappearing.”
Banner image: Newly described moths. Image courtesy of Kyhl Austin et al. (2026).
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