Warmer collection intervals had higher mean ground beetle catch rates in a season and year model at 11 UK sites in 1994–2013

We tested the link between collection-interval temperature and ground beetle catch rates in UK Environmental Change Network pitfall records. The sample had 189,575 beetles from 136 recorded species at 11 sites in 1994–2013. A conditional Poisson mean model used 6,089 informative May–October line-intervals. It included trap effort, rain, a seasonal curve for each line, and annual line totals. The equal mean of site log slopes gave an 11.0% higher catch rate per 1°C. A nominal 95% interval from 999 shared three-year calendar-block resamples was 8.9% to 14.8%. Site estimates were positive at 10 of 11 sites. The mean stayed positive with stricter seasonal controls, different quality rules, shifted weather dates, and removal of Pterostichus madidus. The response agrees with prior work on temperature-dependent pitfall catch. This study adds a reproducible application and an interval-level data product. Pitfall records combine density and movement. The model does not identify a causal effect or measure true population change. The sites are a selected monitoring set, and the weather data are gridded estimates. The package preserves source files, provenance, sample ledgers, species counts, code, all results and figures. An independent source rebuild and an explicit-intercept model check passed. A clean offline repeat matched all 27 result and figure files.

ground beetles · pitfall traps · temperature · activity density · Environmental Change Network · MERRA-2 · reproducibility · conditional Poisson