Functional Trait Capacity: PollinERA talk at the thematic EFSA-KIC meeting

Imagine two landscapes that look identical at first glance. In both fields, you spot the same pollinators around the same plants. It is easy to assume these two landscapes share the same health and resilience, and that the same intervention would bring identical results. However, science shows that beneath the surface these seemingly twin ecosystems can have very different capacities to survive and thrive.

This hidden reality took centre stage at the recent meeting of the European Food Safety Authority's Knowledge and Innovation Community (EFSA-KIC) on biodiversity and Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA). On 1 October, PollinERA project coordinator Prof. Christopher J. Topping introduced a concept that challenges our traditional approach to conservation: Functional Trait Capacity (FTC)

During his presentation, Prof. Topping pointed out that observational metrics, however well standardised, describe only biodiversity state and that management and chemical-use decisions need a conditional prediction of what a landscape can sustain. This is where FTC comes in and enables prediction. It defines the specific set of biologically admissible trait strategies that can remain viable under declared landscape conditions, management practices, and specific time horizons.

To bring the concept to life, Prof. Topping shared a synthetic demonstration showing the two things that matter for assessment: identical observed communities can conceal different capacities, and the same intervention can produce different gains depending on landscape context. Further details on this issue, discussed at an EFSA KIC meeting, can also be found in the new PollinERA paper, ‘Functional Trait Capacity: from observing biodiversity to predicting landscape capacity’, published in the open-access journal npj Sustainable Agriculture.

About EFSA:

EFSA is a European Union agency established in 2002 to provide impartial scientific advice to risk managers and communicate risks associated with the food chain. They cooperate with interested parties to promote the coherence of EU scientific advice and provide the scientific basis for laws and regulations to protect European consumers from food-related risks – from farm to fork.