During the conference, the main talks run for three consecutive days, Tuesday 20th – Thursday 22nd November, with the key symposium all day on the first day. All this is preceded by the field trips on the Monday, and the student-only day on Sunday.

Note that the Ecological Society of Australia are meeting in Perth in November in the week after our conference (26–30 November, see www.ecolsoc.org.au/ESA2007Conference.htm) so it will be possible to attend both if you are keen.

Scientific programme

All-day symposium: "Feathers to Fur: the ecological transformation of Aotearoa"

This year, the NZES conference returns to update the theme of its 1986 conference, "Moas, mammals, and climate in the ecological history of New Zealand", by reviewing and synthesizing current understanding about past changes to NZ's fauna and flora. New Zealand's biota has changed substantially over the past several million years. The recent human-caused upheavals are just the last of many revolutions that have occurred on what Matt McGlone recently dubbed the "flypaper of the Pacific". As in the 1986 conference, we plan to compare and contrast the abiotic (climate, earthquakes, etc.) and biotic (extinction of moa, lost mutualists, invasions, etc.) causes and consequences of biotic change. We anticipate that this conference will provide the state-of-the-art historical context necessary to understand what NZ ecology will look like in the near future.

Most of the talks on this first day will be invited speakers whom we hope will give exciting reviews of progress since 1986 and summarise the current state of knowledge. A draft of what we are planning for the first day is below. Note that the alliterative title "Feathers to Fur" is not meant to imply a focus on introduced mammals to the exclusion of fire, climate, geology, fragmentation, etc.; all will be scrutinised. We expect some of the contributed talks will also be on aspects of the Feathers to Fur theme, and these may be incorporated into a continuation session on Wednesday morning.

The 1989 "moa" volume of the New Zealand Journal of Ecology which published papers from the 1986 conference was a concise summary of our ecological understanding of NZ in the mid 1980s, and it has been highly cited as a result. Four of the ten most cited papers in the history of New Zealand Journal of Ecology come from the 1989 special issue. This is impressive given that there have been 48 issues of the journal so far since it was renamed in 1978. Overall, the special issue has attracted more citations per paper per year than any other issue of similar vintage. (Citation details are discussed in the June issue of the NZES Newsletter.)

Thanks to sponsorship from Landcare Research, Feathers to Fur will be published in 2008 as another special issue of the New Zealand Journal of Ecology, including both the invited papers and any relevant contributed talks from the rest of the conference. We hope that it proves to be as useful in the next two decades as the 1989 volume has been over the last two decades.

Draft Programme for the Feathers to Fur symposium, Tuesday 19 November. The exact wording of talk titles is subject to change.

Time	Draft Title	Speaker
Morning:	An overview of current understanding of ancient and recent turnovers in the New Zealand fauna and flora, and their causes and consequences.
8:45 am	Past and present turnover in New Zealand invertebrates	George Gibbs, Victoria University of Wellington
9:15 am	Past and present turnover in New Zealand plants	Bill Lee, Landcare Research Dunedin
9:45 am	Past and present turnover in New Zealand terrestrial vertebrates	Alan Tennyson, Te Papa
10:45 am	Past and present turnover in New Zealand freshwater fish	Bob McDowall, NIWA
11:15 am	Past and present turnover in New Zealand fungi	Peter Johnston, Landcare Research, Auckland
Afternoon:	A closer look
12:45 pm	Unique characteristics of the NZ flora: moa, climate, or serendipity?	Matt McGlone, Landcare Research Lincoln
1:10 pm	Moa ecology: population dynamics and habitat use	Richard Holdaway, University of Canterbury
1:35 pm	Mammalian herbivore impacts on New Zealand vegetation	Dave Forsyth, Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Victoria, Australia
2 pm	Regeneration gaps and vegetation change in NZ forests: earthquakes and climate	Richard Duncan, Lincoln University and Landcare Research
2:25 pm	The role of soils in vegetation change	Prof. Leo Condron, Lincoln University
3:25 pm	Changes in frugivory, seed dispersal, and pollination and their consequences	Prof. Dave Kelly, University of Canterbury
3:50 pm	Invasive invertebrates in NZ ecosystems: invasion and impacts	Eckehard Brockerhoff, ENSIS
4:15 pm	Salmonid impacts on native galaxiid fish	Angus Macintosh, University of Canterbury
4:40 pm	Predation and food limitation in native birds	John Innes, Landcare Research Hamilton
5:05 pm	Rat impacts and their timing	Janet Wilmhurst, Landcare Research Lincoln
5:30 pm	Changes on islands: seabirds, rats, climate	Peter Bellingham, Landcare Research Lincoln
Conclusion	Symposium and Conference wrap-up on Thursday 21 November
Thursday 5:00 pm	Progress in NZ ecology in the past 20 years and future challenges	John Ogden, University of Auckland

Other symposia and final call for symposia

There are three other symposia already identified for the conference, to run on Wednesday or Thursday, as follows.

1. Scaling up – biodiversity and ecosystem function: Although it is well recognised that species affect ecosystem processes through different impacts on carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, and hydrological regimes, the way and area over which this occurs varies considerably in different ecosystems. This symposium explores the species-ecosystem function issue by examining the topic at different spatial scales and across a range of ecosystem functions. Major questions include: How do species, either directly or indirectly, change ecosystem characteristics, and over what spatial scales do these processes effectively operate? Are species interactions more important than individual species effects? Do cryptic components of biodiversity (microbes, fungi etc) drive ecosystem processes? Do species-ecosystem linkages have a role in conservation? If you would like to contribute to the symposium please contact Bill Lee (leew@landcareresearch.co.nz) Landcare Research, Private Bag 1930, Dunedin.
   
   
2. Toxins and pest control: As a spin off of the current 1080 review and recent developments in the efficacy of aerial 1080 against rats and mustelids, there has been heightend interest in the relative value of different pest control methods. In particular, this symposium will address the following. What animal pest control method or combination of methods is/are most likely (taking into account factors such as cost, accessibility, topography, etc) to protect the full range of biodiversity comprising New Zealand’s mainland forest ecosystems - and where (ecosystem type, areas of high biodiversity value, etc) and when (frequency, timing, etc) would these method(s) be applied to best protect a representative sample of this biodiversity? If you would like to contribute to the symposium please contact Shaun Ogilvie at Lincoln University (ogilvies@lincoln.ac.nz).
   
   
3. Island management and restoration: New Zealand has a proud record in the establishment, maintenance and restoration of island sanctuaries, and these are now critical for sustaining our endemic biodiversity. Also, Kiwi attitudes and techniques regarding islands have been exported to great effect around the world. Last year, the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted a global Programme of Work on Islands. In New Zealand, DOC is preparing a National Islands Management Strategy and is implementing an Island Biosecurity Island Audit Programme, which the symposium will feature. These initiatives must be underpinned by good ecological science, some of which is waiting to be reported, and some of still needs to be done. For more information, please contact Rod Hay (rhay@doc.govt.nz) at DOC, PO Box 13-049, Christchurch.
   
   
4. LENZ (Land Environments NZ) and Threatned Environments Classification: We aim to review and update the science underpinning the LENZ and Threatened Environment Classification systems. These spatial tools have been designed to assist in land use and conservation decision making. We hope this will raise issues of relevance to local and regional authorities, among others. If you would like to contribute to the symposium please contact Philip Grove at Environment Canterbury (philip.grove@ecan.govt.nz).