This year, the NZ Ecological Society conference will return to the theme of its 1986 conference, "Moas, mammals, and climate in the ecological history of New Zealand", by reviewing and synthesizing what we now know about past changes to NZ's fauna and flora. We are planning to start the conference with a full day of talks on this theme. Most of the talks on this first day will be invited speakers whom we hope will give exciting reviews of progress since 1986.

As we all know, 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.

Following this structured first day will be the regular bevy of submitted talks, posters, and general ecological conviviality. We expect some of the sessions of submitted talks will be on aspects of the same "Feathers to Fur" theme.