Functional diversity and ecosystem services

Abstract The identification and quantification of ecosystem services, which are the benefits that human societies derive from ecosystems, have become major challenges in the context of informing the actions of managers and decision makers. They raise numerous research questions at the interface of a range of disciplines, as they are based on jointly taking into account biophysical, economic, and social determinants. The biophysical bases of services provided by an ecosystem result from functions which depend on the types of organisms constituting the ecosystem, as well as the processes controlling their interactions with the environment. Traits which are linked to the manner in which organisms use resources and interact with each other, including among trophic levels, are good candidates for predicting a large number of processes fundamental for the production of ecosystem services. However, ecosystems can deliver multiple services (multifunctionality), and each of these can depend on one or a number of processes, which can in turn depend on varying combinations of traits. From an operational point of view, the determination of the biophysical bases of services requires the identification of the main abiotic factors and components of diversity affecting those processes underlying the provision of services in a given ecosystem. As taxonomic diversity on its own does not allow the local quantification of the level of multiple services or the trade-offs among these services, a new approach consists of analysing how functional trade-offs existing at the level of traits translate to trade-offs at the level of services.