Dr. Samuel B. Case is an ecologist studying how extinction, invasion, and environmental change reshape plant-animal interactions. Trained initially through bird-focused research, his work expanded in Hawaiʻi into a broader fascination with plants, ecological interactions, and the ways species loss reorganizes entire living systems. His research combines field ecology, museum collections, behavioral observation, and 3D modeling to understand how ecological relationships persist, reorganize, or break down, and how those systems might be restored.

Dr. Case’s interest in plant-animal interactions began in Tasmania, where he studied the endangered forty-spotted pardalote and discovered a novel foraging behavior where birds mined for eucalyptus exudates. He later worked on his PhD with Dr. Corey Tarwater at the University of Wyoming and collaborators on the Hawaiʻi VINE Project, where he studied seed dispersal by introduced birds in Hawaiʻi and developed a deeper interest in trait-based mechanisms underlying novel interactions, ecological replacement, and the functional consequences of species loss. This research was conducted under an awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP).

While conducting research at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Dr. Case developed the conceptual foundation for what would become the Lost Manu Research Initiative. There, he began formulating research on trait matching between Hawaiian nectar-feeding birds and lobelioids, along with a broader approach that integrated field ecology, museum specimens, and 3D modeling to study the ecological consequences of bird extinction in Hawaiʻi. He then conducted postdoctoral research with Dr. Alejandro Rico-Guevara at the University of Washington and the Burke Museum through a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (NSF PRFB), focusing on the impacts of bird decline and extinction on Hawaiian bird-plant interactions.

Following the fellowship, Dr. Case launched the Lost Manu Research Initiative as an independent, place-based science and conservation program in Hawaiʻi. Through Lost Manu, he studies pollination, seed dispersal, trait matching, and ecological network structure across the archipelago, linking ecological theory with museum-based reconstruction, field data, and conservation practice.

Dr. Case is currently based on Maui, where he works as a Research Scientist at the University of Washington and as an Avian Research Specialist focused on ʻAlalā recovery. He is also affiliated with the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum.