Notes on Blow Fly (Diptera: Calliphoridae) Succession on Carrion in Northern Mississippi

Abstract

Blow fly succession on carrion was investigated in Lafayette County, Mississippi. Phaenicia caeruleiviridis, Phormia regina and Cochliomyia macellaria were dominant species from April through September and Cynomyopsis cadaverina, P. regina and Calliphora livida dominated during the cooler months (October through March). Although both fish and mammalian carrion were used, and baits were placed in different habitats, no differences between types of bait and types of habitat were observed. The use of P. caeruleiviridis and C. cadaverina as postmortum indicators is discussed.

Behavioral Patterns of Adult Carrion Flies Phormiaregina and Luciliacoeruleiviridis (Diptera: Calliphoridae) at Pig Carcasses in West Virginia, USA.

“…We found that carcass decomposition occurred most rapidly in warm sunlit conditions, corroborating Goddard and Lago (1985) who noted that decomposition occurred much faster on warm sunny days than on cooler days, and Shean et al (1993) who reported that an exposed (i.e., sunlit) pig was consumed at a much faster rate than a shaded one. Thus under these warm sunlit conditions, where the suitability of carcass substrates as feeding and oviposition sites was of shorter duration, we recorded the shortest adult visitation periods; 72 h for L. coeruleiviridis, and 120 h for P. regina (Fig.…”

“…We found that L. coeruleiviridis arrived at carcasses early, but their numbers diminished over time, being supplanted by P. regina adults. The same pattern of relative numbers for these two species over time in the decomposition process was observed by (Goddard and Lago 1985).…”

“…Four stages -fresh, bloat, decay and dry -are commonly recognized in the progression of carcass decomposition (Reed 1958;Johnson 1975;Goddard and Lago 1985;Grunner et al 2007), although some authors (Anderson and VanLaerhoven 1996;Richards and Goff 1997;Tabor-Kreitlow 2009) employ a 5-stage scheme by subdividing the decay stage into early and late decay stages. Payne (1965) had recognized six stages, but the difference in his categorization was minimal in that he merely constructed subdivisions for the decay stage (i.e., "active" and "advanced") and dry stage (i.e., "dry" and "remains").…”

“…Moreover, L. coeruleivirids consistently makes up the "first arrivals" (within the first 24 h after death) on a variety of other carcass substrates from disparate geographic locales in the U.S.: rats, rabbits and sheep in California (Denno and Cothran 1975); rabbits, opossums and largemouth bass in Mississippi (Goddard and Lago 1985); chickens in Missouri (Hall and Doisy 1993); squirrels, rabbits, cat, opossum in Illinois (Johnson 1975); alligators in Alabama (Nelder et al 2009); and dogs in Tennessee (Reed 1958). We found that L. coeruleiviridis arrived at carcasses early, but their numbers diminished over time, being supplanted by P. regina adults.…”

“…Unlike L. coeruleiviridis, P. regina arrives later when carcasses are in the bloat or active decay stage of decomposition (Denno and Cothran 1975;Goddard and Lago 1985;Hall and Doisy 1993), bringing Anderson and VanLaerhoven (1996) to remark that P. regina is not a "pioneer species." These were precisely the adult visitation patterns, relative to the stage of carcass decomposition, we observed for L. coeruleiviridis and P. regina.…”