Meanwhile, Floyd Reed, a biologist at the University of Hawai'i at Mnoa, has been working on a different kind of drive system called underdominance to prevent the Culex mosquitoes introduced to Hawaii from
spreading avian malaria to endangered birds, including the Hawaiian honeycreeper.
When an alien species enters a new ecosystem, it can alter the environment in a number of ways: by eating native species (in its 50 years on Guam, the Australian brown tree snake has eliminated 9 of 13 native bird species); by
spreading disease among them (introduced birds in Hawaii thrive in part because they are far less susceptible to the
avian malaria parasite, also an introduced species, than native birds are); or by altering the environment in such a way that favors themselves (like melaleuca, an Australian tree that is
spreading through the Everglades in part by changing the frequency and intensity of fires).