Preliminary study of insects associated to indoor body decay in Colombia

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Preliminary study of insects associated to indoor body decay in Colombia. This is the first report studying insects associated to indoor body decay process of a white pig (Sus scrofa) (Artiodactyla, Suidae) in a controlled indoor environment in an urban area of Florencia city, Amazonia Piedmont, Colombia. For a period of 54 days, 9,220 individuals (immature and adults), distributed in 3 orders, 5 families, 10 genera, and 10 species were collected using entomological nets and tweezers. Five decaying stages are described (fresh, bloated, active decay, advanced decay and remains). During the fresh stage we recorded Cochliomyia macellaria (Fabricius, 1775) MATERIAL AND METHODSThe study was carried out in an area of 4 m 2 , in an old bath located on the seventh floor of a building, 70 m from the ground. The bathroom has no windows, a door which remained closed, leaving only a space for the entrance of the insects of approximately 2 cm between the door and the bathroom floor. This building is located in the urban area of Florencia, (2º58' N and 0º40' S and between 71º30' and 76º15' W., at 270 m.) with an annual mean rainfall of 3,793 mm, average temperature of 25°C, mean annual relative humidity of 92%. The region is characterized by being the intersection zone between the piedmont and the Amazonia planes, featured by small hills and alluvial terraces which resulted from accumulation of materials, forming reliefs that go from plane to undulate and abrupt (IGAC 2010).The study was carried out using a white pig (Sus scrofa) of approximately 14.5 kg, slaughtered at the study site (performed by a professional of "Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación", the Technical Body of Researches C.T.I. for the Spanish acronym, of the Nation General Prosecutors), by means of impact of a caliper 9 mm bullet in the frontal region of the skull, on July 20, 2010 at approximately 06:00 a.m. From the moment of death until the carcass was only bones and skin, photographs were taken and notes of the physical changes observed were recorded; samples of insects were taken four times every day (06:00, 10:00, 14:00 and 18:00 hours) all along the decaying process. Besides, factors such as body weight, room temperature (thermo-hygrometer digital Thermo) and rectal body temperature, (Elan digital thermometer) were recorded.Sampling of adult flying insects was made using entomological nets of 20 cm in diameter; non-flying adults and immature individual found on, under, and around the body were collected using tweezers and fine tip brushes, following the methodology proposed by Haskell (1990). The individuals collected were taxonomically determined to species when possible, using the keys proposed by Mariluis & Peris (1984) Life cycles. Once the first masses of eggs were found, they were taken into rearing chambers, consisting of polythene containers with lids, filled with white sterile sand to facilitate pupation. Larvae where fed with ground cow meat, the chambers were kept in styrofoam containers to avoid contamination by other insects and the...

Flesh flies (Diptera: Sarcophagidae: Sarcophaginae) from the Colombian Guajira biogeographic province, an approach to their ecology and distribution

“…In Colombia, records of this fly subfamily are scarce, with the little information being mostly the result of recent studies on forensic entomology (Wolff et al 2001, Pérez et al 2005, Martínez et al 2007, Buenaventura et al 2009, Barrios and Wolff 2011, Ramos and Wolff 2011, Ramírez-Mora et al 2012, Amat et al 2013, Yepes-Gaurisas et al 2013, Ramos-Pastrana et al 2014, Mello-Patiu 2016. The catalogue of Sarcophagidae from Colombia (Mello-Patiu 2016) listed 102 species in 26 genera and two subfamilies, of which 96 species belong to Sarcophaginae.…”

Intra-puparial development of Lucilia eximia (Diptera, Calliphoridae)

“…In the neotropics this species is found from the north of Mexico to south South America (Whitworth 2014), and had also been reported in forensic studies in Europe (Velásquez et al 2010), in North America (Debry et al 2013;Sanford et al 2014), in Central America (Garcés et al 2004;Calderón-Arguedas et al 2005), and in South America (Rocha et al 2010;RamosPastrana and Wolff 2011;Barros-Souza et al 2012;UrarahyRodrigues et al 2013;Ramos-Pastrana et al 2014). The objectives of this research were to analyze the intra-puparial development of Lucilia eximia, and to describe chronological and morphological changes that occur during this stage.…”

Postmortem interval estimation based on Chrysomya albiceps (Diptera, Calliphoridae) in a forensic case in the Andean Amazon, Caquetá, Colombia

“…The scene remained undisturbed during the period until the insect sampling was performed by an entomologist (Y. Ramos) and other forensic specialists who collected 87 puparia of C. albiceps, of which 53 were empty. This species is the only recorded for Chrysomya in this region (Ramos-Pastrana et al 2014).…”

“…The use of insects to estimate the postmortem interval (PMI) has been well established in several countries (Pujol-Luz et al 2008), through either case reports or studies on the fauna associated to corpses. In Colombia, many studies have been conducted in the last decade on the entomofauna that live on carcasses (Wolff et al 2001;Vélez and Wolff 2008;Ramos-Pastrana et al 2014), but this data has not been used in human cases so far. The current study is the first in the Colombian Amazon Piedemont to estimate postmortem interval based on Chrysomya albiceps on a human corpse.…”

“…Chrysomya albiceps (Wiedemann 1819) is considered one of the main species of forensic importance due to its early presence on the corpse and high reproductive rate (Vásquez and Liria 2012). This African species was reported in the Neotropics in the late 1970s, initially in Brazil (Guimarães et al 1978), then in Argentina, Paraguay (Mariluis 1983), Peru (Baumgartner and Grenberg 1985), and Colombia (Ramos-Pastrana et al 2014). It is nowadays considered to have a worldwide distribution (Grassberger et al 2003), which has allowed the use of this species in a variety of important studies because it is easy to collect and to keep under laboratory conditions (Vélez and Wolff 2008; Pujol-Luz and Barros-Cordeiro 2012).…”