Climatic reconstruction through beetle proxy temperature data.
by
Phil Buckland
Environmental Archaeology Lab, Umeå, Sweden
Coauthors: Paul Buckland (Dept. Archaeology and Prehistory, Sheffield University, UK)

The insect kingdom makes up 98 percent of animals presently known to inhabit the earth. Some 75 percent of these species are beetles, most of which have very specific habitat requirements within which temperature is a very important variable. The projection of modern ecological data over fossil assemblages allows us to reconstruct climatic change, and AMS dating means that the insect remains themselves can be dated, giving enhanced possibilities for refined reconstructions and chronologies. Roughly 150 sites have been analysed by palaeoentomologists with the principal aim of climatic reconstruction (and a further 200 sites have been looked at from archaeological perspectives, including human impact on the landscape). The BUGS database collates habitat (including environmental dependency variables) and distribution (both modern and fossil) for over 5000 species of beetle - the complete UK fauna, and a significant part of the North European fauna, in excess of 40mb of information of use not only to palaeoecologists but also to conservation research. In addition a similar database has been constructed for the coleopteran fauna of Egypt and both Palaearctic Diptera and molluscan databases are in progress.

Our intention is to build on this base by adding MCR functionality - that is the ability to perform temperature reconstructions within the program by using the "Mutual Climatic Range" of the species within a sample. ArcView (GIS) will be used to display distribution maps (initially Palaearctic, building up a transect with Sweden, UK and Egypt). These maps will be fed with reconstruction data from the BUGS database system, where site data are contained in MS Excel spreadsheets. Users will be able to view both the fossil and modern insect records, temperature reconstructions, and predicted distributions under simulated climatic scenarios.

BUGS Palaeoecology Program Homepage

Date received: May 2, 2001

Copyright © 2001 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cahi-67.