What is it about?
The online databases Neotoma and BugsCEP, as well as publically available articles, were searched for published data on fossil records of tree-killing bark beetles in Europe and North America. These data were compared with historical records of the concerning species, available from the database GBIF. Geographical point maps were created in the program R and are presented for different time periods. The results show that a relatively low amount of fossil sites is recorded with tree-killing bark beetles in Europe and North America, as well as a low amount of historical occurences was recorded in the database GBIF. Only one site in North America recorded multiple individuals of a bark beetle species from the Holocene. New unpublished data from Central Europe with identifications of Ips typographus and Pityogenes chalcographus increases the amount of available fossil data significantly.
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Perspectives
By comparing fosssil data with modern distribution data, patterns in historical distribution and projections for future distribution of species could be made. This overview of available data shows that there is only little fossil and histrocial data available, but also presents the potential of the identification of tree-killing bark beetles in existing and new fossil records.
Nick Schafstall
Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Late Glacial and Holocene records of tree-killing conifer bark beetles in Europe and North America: Implications for forest disturbance dynamics, The Holocene, February 2020, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0959683620902214.
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