Overcoming challenges to access ecological function: a marine soft-bottom perspective

Ecosystem functioning studies have gained prominence due to concerns about the decline of species. In marine sediments, benthic invertebrates perform important ecological functions. However, the challenges within the field of functional ecology are sparsely discussed. Our aim was to systematize the problems and suggest pathways forward. To achieve this, we review recent articles on functional ecology on marine sediments and identified two main issues. First, the absence of a clear definition of terms. Second, in terms of applicability, we observed a mismatch between the scales of functioning and traits, incomplete information on trait databases, inappropriate selection of traits, subjective measures of traits, overlooked trait variability and data analyses without the link between the taxonomy and the traits associated with functions. We propose some pathways to overcome the challenges, such as (i) reasoning of the concept of function, process and trait, (ii) increasing experiments to measure functions, (iii) clarification of the relationship between traits and functions, (iv) clear procedure for assigning trait scores, (v) experiments for understanding trait variability and function performance, and (vi) analyses that consider the sets of traits of each taxon. Overcoming these challenges will allow us to advance research and fill gaps in knowledge of ecosystem functioning.