Hawai‘i forest review: Synthesizing the ecology, evolution, and conservation of a model system

•Hawaiian forests are home to a highly endemic and disharmonic biota due to dispersal limitation and adaptive radiations in some lineages.•Steep environmental gradients and abiotic heterogeneity shape complex ecological and evolutionary dynamics in Hawaiian forests.•Human-caused regime shifts across Hawaiʻi have fundamentally altered species assemblages and ecosystem function.•Native species interactions are poorly characterized in Hawaiʻi ‘s forests, and are now dominated by non-native pathogens, animals, and plants.•Conservation of Hawaiʻi ‘s forests benefits from explicit integration of ecology and evolution with restoration.