This was part of my PhD in Scotland. I used the long-term ground beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) dataset of the UK Environmental Change Network to investigate whether ground beetles start their activity earlier in the spring and cease it later in the autumn over a twenty-year period. A gradual change in both directions was expected as a response to climate change but we have only found support for the earlier emergence/start of activity. The timing of autumn hibernation, thus, seems to be
driven by cues other than temperature; most likely photoperiod .
Our finding that the species that did not alter their phenology declined more than those that did is of high conservation interest.
