The 2011 meeting of the European Ecological Federation took place in Ávila, Spain, from 26th September to 29th September. The French Ecological Society (SFE) and the Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) sponsored a session entitled ‘Evolutionary history, ecosystem function and conservation biology: new perspectives’. We report on the main insights obtained from this symposium.

Summary 1.Invasive species are detrimental ecologically and economically. Their negative impacts in Africa are extensive and call for a renewed commitment to better understand the correlates of invasion success. 2. Here, we explored several putative drivers of species invasion among woody non-native trees and shrubs in southern Africa, a region of high floristic diversity. We tested for differences in functional traits between plant categories using a combination of phylogenetic independent contrasts and a simulation-based phylogenetic ANOVA. 3. We found that non-native species generally have longer flowering duration compared with native species and are generally hermaphroditic, and their dispersal is mostly abiotically mediated. We also revealed that non-native trees and shrubs that have become invasive are less closely related to native trees and shrubs than their non-invasive non-native counterparts. Non-natives that are more closely related to the native species pool may be more likely to possess traits suited to the new environment in which they find themselves and thus have greater chance of establishment. However, successful invaders are less closely related to the native pool, indicating evidence for competitive release or support for the vacant niche theory. 4. Synthesis. Non-native trees and shrubs in southern Africa are characterized by a suite of traits, including long flowering times, a hermaphroditic sexual system and abiotic dispersal, which may represent important adaptations promoting establishment. We suggest that differences in the evolutionary distances separating the native species pool from invasive and non-invasive species might help resolve Darwin's naturalization conundrum.

Aim: Diversity dynamics remain controversial. Here, we examine these dynamics, together with the ecological factors governing them, across mammalian clades of different ages and sizes, representing different phylogenetic scales. Specifically, we investigate whether the dynamics are bounded or unbounded, biotically or abiotically regulated, stochastic or ecologically deterministic. Location: Worldwide.Time period: 150 Myr.Major taxa studied: Mammals.Methods: Integrating the newest phylogenetic and distributional data by means of several distinct methods, we study the ecology of mammalian diversification within a predictive framework, inspired by classic theory. Specifically, we evaluate the effects of several classes of factors, including climate, topography, geographical area, rates of climatic-niche evolution, and regional coexistence between related and unrelated species. Next, we determine whether the relative effects of these factors change systematically across clades representing different phylogenetic scales.Results: We find that young clades diversify at approximately constant rates, medium-sized clades show diversification slowdowns, and large clades are mostly saturated, suggesting that diversification dynamics change as clades grow and accumulate species. We further find that diversification slowdowns intensify with the degree of regional coexistence between related species, presumably because increased competition for regional resources suppresses the diversification process. The richness at which clades eventually saturate depends on climate; clades residing in tropical climates saturate at low richness, implying that niches become progressively densely packed towards the tropics. Main conclusions:The diversification process is influenced by a variety of ecological factors, whose relative effects change across phylogenetic scales, producing scale-dependent dynamics.Different segments of the same phylogeny might therefore support seemingly conflicting results (bounded or unbounded, biotically or abiotically regulated, stochastic or ecologically deterministic diversification), which might have contributed to several outstanding controversies in the field.These conflicts can be reconciled, however, when accounting for phylogenetic scale, which might, in turn, produce a more integrated understanding of global diversity dynamics. K E Y W O R D Sbiogeography, competition, macroevolution, niche, phylogeny 32 |

1Infectious diseases of domesticated animals impact human well-being via food insecurity, loss of 2 livelihoods, and human infections. While much research has focused on parasites that infect single 3 host species, most parasites of domesticated mammals infect multiple species. The impact of multi-4 host parasites varies across hosts; some rarely result in death, whereas others are nearly always fatal. 5 Despite their high ecological and societal costs, we currently lack theory for predicting the lethality 6 of multi-host parasites. Here, using a global dataset of over 4000 case-fatality rates for 65 infectious 7 diseases (caused by micro and macro-parasites) and 12 domesticated host species, we show that the 8 average evolutionary distance from an infected host to other mammal host species is a strong predictor 9 of disease-induced mortality. We find that as parasites infect species outside of their documented phy-10 logenetic host range, they are more likely to result in lethal infections, with the odds of death doubling 11 for each additional 10 million years of evolutionary distance. Our results for domesticated animal 12 diseases reveal patterns in the evolution of highly lethal parasites that are difficult to observe in the 13 wild, and further suggest that the severity of infectious diseases may be predicted from evolutionary 14 relationships among hosts. 15 19 rity, labour and livelihoods, costs of prevention and control programs, and increased human infection 20 (Dehove et al., 2012). However, the severity of disease can vary dramatically among parasites. Ca-21 nine rabies alone results in approximately 59,000 human deaths and 8.6 billion USD in economic 22 losses annually (Hampson et al., 2015). By contrast, other diseases rarely result in death. For exam-23 ple, bovine brucellosis largely impacts cattle by causing abortion, infertility and reduced growth, but 24 disease induced mortality in adult cows is uncommon (McDermott et al., 2013). 25Well established theory on single-host parasites predicts that the reduction in host fitness due to 26 2 infection (termed "virulence") should evolve to an optimal level determined by a trade-off with trans-27 mission (Cressler et al., 2016). For multi-host parasites, optimal virulence may be subject to additional 28 trade-offs, with selection for high or low virulence depending on the ecologies and evolutionary his-29 tories of each susceptible host species (Woolhouse et al., 2001; Gandon, 2004; Rigaud et al., 2010). 30In the absence of trade-offs, a wider host breadth should provide a larger pool of susceptible individ-31 uals, increasing opportunities for transmission and the evolution of higher virulence (Barrett et al., 32 2009). However, adaptation to novel hosts may reduce a parasite's ability to utilize resources of their 33 co-evolved hosts (Ebert, 1998; Longdon et al., 2014), resulting in limited replication and decreased 34 virulence (Antonovics et al., 2013). This trade-off is supported by comparative studies of plant RNA 35viruses and avian malaria p...