Species climate index data for United Kingdom invertebrates

Numerous approaches have been used to assess the response of species to changing climate. One of the simplest is the calculation of indices which describe the climate of areas occupied by different species and uses them to assess community level change or to assess if species' trends are predictable from the climate of their ranges. The paper describes the calculation of Species Climate Indices for 4924 UK invertebrate species from freshwater and terrestrial ecosystem by combining information from occurrence records and historical climate data. The indices calculated are the mean January temperature, mean July temperature and mean annual precipitation of 10 km x 10 km squares occupied by the species during the period used for calculating the climate data (1991-2020). These data have been used to assess if trends in occupancy are correlated to species' climate indices 1 but are also ideally used for looking at trends within communities if repeat sampling has been carried out.