Pollen-based reconstruction reveals the impact of the onset of agriculture on plant functional trait composition.

The onset of agriculture improved the capacity of ecosystems to produce food, but inadvertently altered other vital ecosystem functions. Plant traits play a central role in determining ecosystem properties, therefore we investigated how the onset of agriculture in Europe changed plant trait composition using 78 pollen records. Using a novel Bayesian approach for reconstructing plant trait composition from pollen records, we provide a robust method that can account for trait variability within pollen types.