Potential distribution ranges in Europe for Ips hauseri, Ips subelongatus and Scolytus morawitzi, a CLIMEX analysis

Introduced bark and ambrosia beetles have become a worldwide problem for the forest industry as well as for recreational parks and nature reserves by directly damaging wood material and killing trees or by vectoring lethal tree diseases. In this study we used the climatic modeling program CLIMEX to simulate potential distribution ranges for three different Asian bark beetles, Ips hauseri (Reitter), Ips subelongatus (Motschulsky) and Scolytus morawitzi (Semenov) on the basis of their current distribution. The program calculates an ecoclimatic index based on the life cycle requirements of a species and thus represents the probability of a viable population existing at a certain location. Simulations show that all of the studied species have a potential distribution according to climatic factors. Also, potential hosts for these species grow in much of Europe, making the potential establishment of these species possible. Simulation with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate change scenario A1B resulted in changes of 200 to 900 km at the northern and southern edges of the distribution ranges for the studied species.