First published 11 July 2018 Rika M. W. Muhl, Daniel L. Roelke, Tamar Zohary, Maria Moustaka‐Gouni, Ulrich Sommer, Gábor Borics, Ursula Gaedke, Frances G. Withrow, Joydeb Bhattacharyya Resisting annihilation: relationships between functional trait dissimilarity, assemblage competitive power and allelopathy Volume 21 Issue 9, 1390–1400, Article first published online: 11 July 2018 In the article ‘Resisting

Ecological systems are no longer at equilibrium, but over much of the history of the Earth, the natural world has been in stationary states, that are punctuated by periods of transience. Just because we have knocked our planet away from a stable state, doesn't mean we have to abandon the concept of equilibrium when we strive to understand the dynamics of the natural world.

Concerns about the prospect of a global pandemic have been triggered many times during the last two decades. These have been realised through the current COVID‐19 pandemic, due to a new coronavirus SARS‐CoV2, which has impacted almost every country on Earth. Here, we show how considering the pandemic through the lenses of the evolutionary ecology of pathogens can help better understand the root causes