Climatic Reconstruction through
Beetle Proxy Temperature Data

From BUGS to MCR: The Next Stage

Phil Buckland
Environmental Archaeology Lab.
Department of Archaeology & Sami Studies
Umeå University, Sweden

In cooperation with:
Paul Buckland, Dept. Archaeology & Prehistory, Sheffield University, UK (Update: Now Bournemouth).
Roger Engelmark, Environmental Archaeology Lab., Umeå University, Sweden.
Jon Sadler, School of Geography & Environmental Sciences, Birmingham University, UK.
Tim Atkinson, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, UK.

* NEWS *

All previous versions and components have been superseded by BugsCEP.

Please download it from the following website: http://www.bugscep.com/downloads.html

Introduction

These webpages are based on a poster presented at the PAGES-PEPIII -- ESF-HOLIVAR "Past Climate Variability Through Europe and Africa" conference held in Aix-en-Provence, from 27-31st August 2001.

Our aim is to outline the planned development of the Bugs Coleapteran Ecology Package into a tool for the reconstruction of past climates through the use of fossil insects. It is intended that the program will scan any valid species list for viable species, and through the MCR method construct a temperature envelope that represents the combined requirements for those species, and thus the environment represented by the sample.

Contents
Why Beetles?

Mutual Climatic Range Method (MCR)

Implementation of MCR into the Bugs Ecology Package

Database: Habitat & Distribution

Database: Climate & Distribution

Database: Climate Reconstruction

Prediction/Retrodiction

Project Scope

References

Acknowledgements

Links & Contact Info.

Why Beetles?

Diachila arctica drawn by Peter Skidmore		Diversity - ~75% of all species of animal, found in all terrestrial and freshwater-brackish environments.
		Habitat specific, dependent on a range of climatic factors.
		Species constancy – migrate rather than evolve. (Exceptions are on isolated ‘islands’ including oceanic islands and mountain peaks where speciation dominates).
		Climate dependency can be determined from distribution data of modern specimens.
		Respond rapidly to environmental stress (including climate – annual reproductive cycles.
		Many groups are not host plant specific.
		Preserve well in waterlogged or desiccated sediments.
		Often identifiable to species level from fossil parts.

Mutual Climatic Range Method (MCR)

By projecting the modern thermal envelope of a beetle species over fossil occurrences, one can reconstruct the probable temperature regime represented by the sample. Overlaying the envelopes for several species allows the reconstruction to be refined, since the group as a population is limited to the habitats in which their combined biology permits survival.

The thermal envelope is represented by TMax (mean temperature of the warmest month) against TRange (TMax-TMin, essentially an index of continentality).

Implementation of MCR into the Bugs Ecology Package

Database: Habitat & Distribution

	>5000 Species Ecology/habitat Distribution, Rarity Fossil record, Images	>300 sites Species lists Species frequencies MS Excel Compatible	Fossil Record Locality Age Reference

Bibliography
>2500 References

Searching/Query
of Habitat &
Distribution data

Built in Reports
Species details
Site summaries
Bibliography

Database: Climate & Distribution

(a) Beetle distribution data is entered into the BUGS database either by text entry direct into the MCR tables for each species (c), or by the use of ArcView’s digitising routine from distribution maps. Missing altitude values, which are important in calculating the relevance of weather station data, are retrieved on request by the ArcView project. Date of capture is essential to ensure that the weather data used accurately represents the macroclimate that the beetle was living in.

(b) ArcView’s Spatial Analyst is used to retrieve temperature data from a database of weather station recordings for each beetle find location and date (this is done partly by altitudinally constrained nearest neighbour analysis of weather station and capture lat/long, and partly by spatial interpolation from a mean lapse rate). This result is fed back into the BUGS MCR tables as TMAX and TRANGE (c).

The full MCR table is used to calculate the thermal envelope for the species. BUGS can be asked to recalculate the thermal envelope in the light of additional capture data.

Database: Climate Reconstruction

	(1) Individual samples are extracted from the count sheets and parsed against the list of MCR viable species in BUGS, to produce a Sample MCR subset.
	(2) Each species in the MCR subset has an associated MCR table, used to calculate thermal envelopes.These are overlaid to produce the MCR diagram.
	(3) The calculations are performed for each sample in the count sheet. If the count sheet represents a chronological/stratigraphic sequence then a composite time series diagram can be produced.
	Comparison of Greenland ice core data (GISP) with fossil beetle evidence from Lateglacial Britain. All beetle samples used are carbon dated, so this is a direct comparison rather than "wiggle matching". Reconstruction data from Alley et al. (1993) & Walker et al. (1993)

Prediction/Retrodiction


Diachila arctica modern distribution		Diachila arctica predicted LIA distribution (-3C)
	The MCR system can be used to display probable fossil distributions, or reversed so as to give predicted insect distributions under potential climate change scenarios. This is especially important where pest species are concerned.

Project Scope

Climate:
Sweden-UK-Egypt...
(as an initial transect and test dataset, and then filling in the gaps as data becomes available and we have time to work on it)

Quaternary fossil record:
(Countries with records in Bugs, including archaeological sites)
Greenland, Iceland, Faroe, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Denmark, British Isles, Belgium, Netherlands, Channel Isles, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Egypt... and anywhere else that researchers decide to do insect work!

References

	ALLEY, R. B., MEESE, D. A., et al. (1993). Abrupt increase in the Greenland snow accumulation at the end of the Younger Dryas event. Nature 362, 527-529.
	ATKINSON, T. C., T. C., BRIFFA, K. R., COOPE, G. R., JOACHIM, J. M. & PERRY, D. W. (1986) Climatic calibration of coleopteran data. In B. E. Berglund (ed.) Handbook of Holocene Palaeoecology and Palaeohydrology, 851-858. J. Wiley & Son, Chichester.
	ATKINSON, T. C., BRIFFA, K. R. & COOPE, G. R. (1987) Seasonal temperatures in Britain during the past 22,000 years, reconstructed using beetle remains. Nature (London), 325, 587-592.
	BUCKLAND, P. C. (1982) The cover sands of North Lincolnshire and the Vale of York. In B. H. Adlam, C. R. Fenn & L. Morris (eds.) Papers in Earth Studies, 143-178. Geobooks, Norwich.
	BUCKLAND, P. I., YUAN ZHUO, D. & BUCKLAND, P. C. (1997) Towards an expert system in Palaeoentomology. In A.C.Ashworth, P.C.Buckland & J.P.Sadler (eds.) Studies in Quaternary Entomology - An Inordinate Fondness for Insects. Quaternary Proceedings 5, 67-78.
	BUCKLAND, P. I., BUCKLAND, P. C., PANAGIOTAKOPULU, E. & SADLER, J. P. (in press) A Database for Egyptian entomology. Egyptian Journal of Entomology.
	COOPE, G. R. (1995) Insect faunas in ice age environments: why so little extinction? In J. H. Lawton & R. M. May (eds.) Extinction Rates, 55-74. Oxford University Press.
	WALKER, M. J. C., COOPE, G. R. & LOWE, J. J. (1993) The Devensian (Weichselian) Lateglacial Palaeoenvironmental Record from Gransmoor, East Yorkshire, England. Quaternary Science Reviews, 12, 659-680.

For more palaeoentomology references check out QBIB - The Quaternary Bibliography of Entomology.

Acknowledgements

- Pete Skidmore for the painting of Diachila arctica - Russell Coope for the original idea - NABO for initial development funds	- The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation for funding through the Northern Crossroads project. - Dave Perry and Tim Atkinson for the original MCR programs

Links (just a couple so as not to duplicate)

BugsCEP - Coleopteran Ecology Package website and here to DOWNLOAD IT.

Environmental Archaeology Lab, Umeå

Contact Info.

If you have any comments, advice, or would like any further information then please contact one of us:

Web design, database technicalities: Phil Buckland

Database contents: Paul Buckland

Page created by Phil Buckland
Last modified March 2, 2007

Climatic Reconstruction through Beetle Proxy Temperature Data

From BUGS to MCR: The Next Stage

Climatic Reconstruction through
Beetle Proxy Temperature Data