Hydrocarbon and Fatty Acid Composition from Blowfly Eggs Represents a Potential Complementary Taxonomic Tool of Forensic Importance,

Abstract

One of the most important contributions of forensic entomology is to assist criminal expertise to determine the postmortem interval, which depends on the duration of the immature stages of insects of forensic interest. On the other hand, the time of development of the different stages varies according to the species; therefore, its identification is essential. Currently, few studies have investigated the use of cuticular hydrocarbons, and none regarding fatty acids, as complementary taxonomic tools to expedite species identification. Therefore, we evaluated whether cuticular hydrocarbons together with fatty acids of eggs of flies of the family Calliphoridae, main group of forensic interest, can be used to distinguish species. The analyses were performed by chromatographic techniques. The results show that there are significant differences between the composition of cuticular hydrocarbons and fatty acids between species and, therefore, they can be used to provide a complementary taxonomic tool to expedite the forensic expertise.

Comparison of Different Life Stages of Total, Phospholipid and Triacylglycerol Fatty Acids of Lucilia sericata

“…L. cuprin had the highest oleic acid concentration. It has been noted that the fatty acid composition of different samples varies quantitatively between genera and even species (Lunas et al, 2019). In our study, it was similarly high in terms of total fatty acid.…”

Forensic Entomotoxicology: A Brief Look at Sample Preparation Techniques – A Review

“…However, it was not possible to detect the ethanol content in larval matrix and the authors did not validated the employed methodology. A few authors have studied the changes in pattern of volatile compounds daily released of pupae and or larvae of blow flies as a function of decomposition using laboratory colonies and meat baits by HS-SPME and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS) [67][68][69][70][71][72]. The authors showed that the volatile profile varied qualitatively and semi quantitatively, with the age of the larva/pupa under investigation and concluded that is possible to increase the accuracy of the estimated PMI, through improved estimation of the age of blowflies present on the corpse, suggesting this type of analysis as a new tool to estimate PMI.…”