Canonical native range
Strong published evidence supports naturally occurring Halocaridina rubra on five of the eight high Hawaiian Islands
Bailey-Brock & Brock (1993) explicitly list these five islands, and NatureServe repeats the same distribution. Hawaiʻi and Maui contain especially extensive anchialine habitat; Oʻahu populations also occur in older limestone/karst and subterranean settings.
Confirmed offshore-islet locality
Popoiʻa should be stored as a distinct locality nested under Oʻahu, not as a sixth high-island population.
Islands not currently promoted as confirmed native range
Do not mark the following as confirmed native-island records unless stronger locality evidence is added
A 1999 paper uses broader wording about occurrence on most high Hawaiian islands except Kauaʻi, but the stronger explicit island list in Bailey-Brock & Brock (1993), repeated by NatureServe, names only Hawaiʻi, Maui, Kahoʻolawe, Molokaʻi and Oʻahu. Aquapedia should therefore retain Kauaʻi, Lānaʻi and Niʻihau as unconfirmed / literature-conflict watchlist rather than silently promoting them to native range.
Population-genetics note
A 2008 phylogeographic study sampled 573 shrimp from 34 sites on Hawaiʻi, Maui and Oʻahu and found 13 genetic groups in eight deeply divergent lineages. Genetic groups were generally restricted to particular regions of single islands, with little evidence of inter-island exchange. Aquapedia should therefore support locality/lineage records below the island level when source data are available.
Habitat note
ʻŌpae ʻula are endemic Hawaiian anchialine shrimp. Records include surface anchialine pools, subterranean water-table habitat, limestone sinkholes/wells, caves, and rare marine-edge observations associated with groundwater discharge. A locality should not be rejected merely because it is not a classic open lava pool.
Public research references
Listed research leads are not automatically supporting evidence for every individual claim.
No eligible public supporting URLs are attached to this summary yet.