科学家发现了几种仅见于夏威夷的毛虫在水下和陆地环境中都能正常生活。Daniel Rubinoff 和 Patrick Schmitz观察到了Hyposmocoma属的蛾的幼虫能在水下和远离溪流的干燥岩石上取食和呼吸，他们还为这种毛虫的基因测序，从而重建它们的进化史。

尽管许多昆虫可以在休眠期忍受极端环境，此前已知没有昆虫能够在整个生命周期里从水面之上和之下生存。这组科学家提出，这种毛虫的两栖生活方式可能代表了Hyposmocoma属蛾历史上分三次发生的平行进化的例子，这些进化的发生早于600多万年前考艾岛的形成。

类似的平行进化的模式（有亲缘关系的物种独立获得类似的适应）也已经见于夏威夷的豆娘和鸟类。这组作者说，这项研究凸显了夏威夷原产的独特的植物和动物物种，栖息地的丧失可能威胁它们的生存。

原文出处：

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.0912501107

Multiple aquatic invasions by an endemic, terrestrial Hawaiian moth radiation
Daniel Rubinoff1 and Patrick Schmitz

Insects are the most diverse form of life on the planet, dominating both terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, yet no species has a life stage able to breath, feed, and develop either continually submerged or without access to water. Such truly amphibious insects are unrecorded. In mountain streams across the Hawaiian Islands, some caterpillars in the endemic moth genus Hyposmocoma are truly amphibious. These larvae can breathe and feed indefinitely both above and below the water's surface and can mature completely submerged or dry. Remarkably, a molecular phylogeny based on 2,243 bp from both nuclear (elongation factor 1α and carbomoylphosphate synthase) and mitochondrial (cytochrome oxidase I) genes representing 216 individuals and 89 species of Hyposmocoma reveals that this amphibious lifestyle is an example of parallel evolution and has arisen from strictly terrestrial clades at least three separate times in the genus starting more than 6 million years ago, before the current high islands existed. No other terrestrial genus of animals has sponsored so many independent aquatic invasions, and no other insects are able to remain active indefinitely above and below water. Why and how Hyposmocoma, an overwhelmingly terrestrial group, repeatedly evolved unprecedented aquatic species is unclear, although there are many other evolutionary anomalies across the Hawaiian archipelago. The uniqueness of the community assemblages of Hawaii's isolated biota is likely critical in generating such evolutionary novelty because this amphibious ecology is unknown anywhere else.