Functional traits in agriculture: agrobiodiversity and ecosystem services

• Knowledge of agrobiodiversity impacts on ecosystem services is limited to a few taxa and services.
• Functional traits can produce more predictive knowledge of agrobiodiversity impacts on ecosystem services.
• This approach should be applied across levels of complexity present in agriculture, such as trophic and spatial scales.
• Functional traits can be used to create agricultural management strategies that increase ecosystem services.

Functional trait research has led to greater understanding of the impacts of biodiversity in ecosystems. Yet, functional trait approaches have not been widely applied to agroecosystems and understanding of the importance of agrobiodiversity remains limited to a few ecosystem processes and services. To improve this understanding, we argue here for a functional trait approach to agroecology that adopts recent advances in trait research for multitrophic and spatially heterogeneous ecosystems. We suggest that trait values should be measured across environmental conditions and agricultural management regimes to predict how ecosystem services vary with farm practices and environment. This knowledge should be used to develop management strategies that can be easily implemented by farmers to manage agriculture to provide multiple ecosystem services.