Despite >100 years of entomological surveys, the bone collector species has only been found in a 15-km2 area of mesic forest in the Waiʻanae mountain range on the island of Oʻahu. Typically, an endemic Hawaiian lineage will contain multiple species with similar habits distributed across at least part of the archipelago [e.g., (11, 12)], but no other member of the bone collector lineage has been found. Phylogenomic analysis shows that the bone collector lineage is at least 6 million years old, >3 million years older than the island of Oʻahu (Fig. 3) (13).

The forest is being increasingly occupied by invasive species.