This project sought to model the UK distribution of the stag beetle in 2070 and was a collaboration with Nathan Mcconnell.

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Thought to have a highly urban distribution in Britain, and being the island's largest beetle Lucanus cervus is a highly visible and beloved species.

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Its current distribution is limited to the Southeast coast, with isolated recordings as far north as Norwich and west as South Wales.

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Using a citizen science dataset compiled from a series of Great Stag Hunt events run by PTES, in combination with current climate data from Worldclim we built and tested a model of stag beetle habitat requirements.

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Applying this model to climate projections for 2070 allowed us to predict where suitable areas for the stag beetle would be located in the future.

We did this separately for a range of climate change severity scenarios or RCPs (relative concentration pathways). RCP 4.5 represents a moderate level of climate change, whereas RCP 8.5 represents an extreme 'do nothing' scenario.

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Results

We found that increasing temperatures in the UK are going to benefit stag beetles. Under all climate scenarios their potential range was greatly increased.

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Although we saw that suitable temperatures would extend right up into Scotland under RCP4.5, the most severe climate change pushes them even further, with RCP8.5 providing an additional 29,000km  of becoming climatically suitable.

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This model only takes into account climate and not habitat availability. Good habitat is likely to decrease under extreme climate change for the stag beetle just like for us humans, so reduce, recycle, everyone!

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If you'd like to read the full project report you can find the PDF here.

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