Rarity patterns of woody plant species are associated with life form and diversification rates in Pacific islands forests.

Life form appears consistently associated with the rarity of species. High diversification rate is probably a key factor explaining landscape-scale rarity of native species on isolated archipelagos like Hawai'i. At the landscape scale, rarity appears to be inversely associated with evolutionary distinctiveness, but at the local scale, species abundance may be not associated with evolutionary distinctiveness.