title: Functional traits in agriculture: agrobiodiversity and ecosystem services.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA; Agriculture and Food Security Center, The Earth Institute, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA. Electronic address: saw2177@columbia.edu.
authors.forename: Stephen A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Wood
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; The Nature Conservancy, Berkeley, CA 94705, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Karp
authors.affiliation: Agriculture and Food Security Center, The Earth Institute, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA; Agrobiodiversity and Ecosystem Services Programme, Biodiversity International, Montpellier 34000, France.
authors.forename: Fabrice
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: DeClerck
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Claire
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kremen
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.
authors.forename: Shahid
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Naeem
authors.affiliation: Agriculture and Food Security Center, The Earth Institute, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.
authors.forename: Cheryl A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Palm
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000379:methods*; D044822:Biodiversity; D017753:Ecosystem; D008962:Models, Theoretical
keywords: agriculture; agrobiodiversity; biodiversity-ecosystem functioning; ecosystem services; functional diversity; functional trait