Provisioning services, such as the production of food, feed, and fiber, have always been the main focus of agriculture. Since the 1950s, intensive cropping systems based on the cultivation of a single crop or a single cultivar, in simplified rotations or monocultures, and relying on extensive use of agrochemical inputs have been preferred to more diverse, self-sustaining cropping systems, regardless of the environmental consequences. However, there is increasing evidence that such intensive agroecosystems have led to a decline in biodiversity as well as threatening the environment and have damaged a number of ecosystem services such as the biogeochemical nutrient cycles and the regulation of climate and water quality. Consequently, the current challenge facing agriculture is to ensure the future of food production while reducing the use of inputs and limiting environmental impacts and the loss of biodiversity. Here, we review examples of multiple cropping systems that aim to use biotic interactions to reduce chemical inputs and provide more ecosystem services than just provisioning. Our main findings are the identification of underlying ecological processes and management strategies related to the provision of pairs of ecosystem services namely food production and a regulation service. We also found gaps between ecological knowledge and the constraints of agricultural practices in taking account of the interactions and possible trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services as well as socioeconomic constraints. We present guidelines for the design of multiple cropping systems combining ecological, agricultural, and genetic concepts and approaches.

Although nitrogen (N) availability is a major determinant of ecosystem properties, little is known about the ecological importance of plants' preference for ammonium versus nitrate (b) for ecosystem functioning and the structure of communities. We modeled this preference for two contrasting ecosystems and showed that b significantly affects ecosystem properties such as biomass, productivity, and N losses. A particular intermediate value of b maximizes the primary productivity and minimizes mineral N losses. In addition, contrasting b values between two plant types allow their coexistence, and the ability of one type to control nitrification modifies the patterns of coexistence with the other. We also show that species replacement dynamics do not lead to the minimization of the total mineral N pool nor the maximization of plant productivity, and consequently do not respect Tilman's R* rule. Our results strongly suggest in the two contrasted ecosystems that b has important consequences for ecosystem functioning and plant community structure.

Although plant strategies for acquiring nutrients have been widely studied from a functional point of view, their evolution is still not well understood. In this study, we investigate the evolutionary dynamics of these strategies and determine how they influence ecosystem properties. To do so, we use a simple nutrientlimited ecosystem model in which plant ability to take up nutrients is subject to adaptive dynamics. We postulate the existence of a trade-off between this ability and mortality. We show that contrasting strategies are possible as evolutionary outcomes, depending on the shape of the trade-off and, when nitrogen is considered as the limiting nutrient, on the intensity of symbiotic fixation. Our model enables us to bridge these evolutionary outcomes to classical ecological theories such as Hardin's tragedy of the commons and Tilman's rule of R*. Evolution does not systematically maximize plant biomass or primary productivity. On the other hand, each evolutionary outcome leads to a decrease in the availability of the limiting mineral nutrient, supporting the work of Tilman on competition between plants for a single resource. Our model shows that evolution can be used to link different classical ecological results and that adaptation may influence ecosystem properties in contrasted ways.