The global trend in losing biodiversity is affecting ecosystems due to changes in their functions and services. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning has become increasingly topical over the last decades, and still a developing research field. Marine macrobenthic fauna are important providers of ecosystem functioning by regulating the fluxes of energy and matter. However, anthropogenic impacts have triggered changes in their structure and function at the community and ecosystem level. Despite advances in recent years, a wider application of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning relationship in benthic communities has been restrained by missing information on biological traits of species and inconsistencies in terminology, methodologies and approaches used. This review synthesizes the current status of knowledge on the functional approaches of marine macrobenthic fauna and their contribution to ecosystem functioning, using a new method named research weaving analysis. We thus provide a research synthesis combining bibliometric analysis and systematic mapping (spread of evidence). We described advancements in the current knowledge and synthesized the most common functional approaches, terminology and numerical methodologies used. A conceptual step-by-step guide is presented to assist future assessments of ecosystem functioning for marine macrobenthic fauna, and suggestions made for coherent use of terminology, trait selection and metrics to measure ecosystem functioning. The analyses presented will support the development of a framework to conduct globally comparable analyses of ecosystem functioning in marine benthic ecosystems.

生物多样性丧失的全球趋势由于其功能和服务的变化而正在影响生态系统。在过去的几十年中，生物多样性和生态系统功能已成为越来越多的话题，并且仍然是一个发展中的研究领域。海洋大型底栖动物通过调节能量和物质的通量，是生态系统功能的重要提供者。但是，人为影响已在社区和生态系统一级触发了其结构和功能的变化。尽管近年来取得了进展，但由于缺少有关物种生物学特性的信息以及所用术语，方法和方法的不一致，限制了生物多样性和生态系统功能关系在底栖生物中的广泛应用。这篇综述使用一种称为研究编织分析的新方法，综合了有关海洋大型底栖动物的功能方法及其对生态系统功能的贡献的知识的现状。因此，我们提供了结合文献计量分析和系统映射（证据扩散）的研究综合报告。我们描述了当前知识的进步，并综合了最常用的功能方法，术语和数值方法。提出了概念性的分步指南，以协助将来对海洋大型底栖动物的生态系统功能进行评估，并就统一使用术语，特征选择和度量标准来衡量生态系统功能提出了建议。