Field succession studies and casework can help to identify forensically useful Diptera

Dawson, Blake M; Barton, Philip S.; Wallman, James F.

doi:10.1111/1556-4029.14870

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 67 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…latifrons has generally been considered a rainforest specialist that is restricted to New South Wales (NSW), Australia (Malloch 1927 ; Wallman 2002 ) and has been commonly recorded throughout rainforests ranging from Wollongong to Coffs Harbour (Butterworth et al 2020 ). However, it has also been collected in rainforest-adjacent dry eucalypt forests (Dawson et al 2021 ), as well as in urban green spaces around the Sydney region (Kavazos and Wallman 2012 ). As such, Ch.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The blowfly Chrysomya latifrons inhabits fragmented rainforests, but shows no population structure

et al. 2023

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate change and deforestation are causing rainforests to become increasingly fragmented, placing them at heightened risk of biodiversity loss. Invertebrates constitute the greatest proportion of this biodiversity, yet we lack basic knowledge of their population structure and ecology. There is a compelling need to develop our understanding of the population dynamics of a wide range of rainforest invertebrates so that we can begin to understand how rainforest fragments are connected, and how they will cope with future habitat fragmentation and climate change. Blowflies are an ideal candidate for such research because they are widespread, abundant, and can be easily collected within rainforests. We genotyped 188 blowflies (Chrysomya latifrons) from 15 isolated rainforests and found high levels of gene flow, a lack of genetic structure between rainforests, and low genetic diversity – suggesting the presence of a single large genetically depauperate population. This highlights that: (1) the blowfly Ch. latifrons inhabits a ~ 1000 km stretch of Australian rainforests, where it plays an important role as a nutrient recycler; (2) strongly dispersing flies can migrate between and connect isolated rainforests, likely carrying pollen, parasites, phoronts, and pathogens along with them; and (3) widely dispersing and abundant insects can nevertheless be genetically depauperate. There is an urgent need to better understand the relationships between habitat fragmentation, genetic diversity, and adaptive potential–especially for poorly dispersing rainforest-restricted insects, as many of these may be particularly fragmented and at highest risk of local extinction.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The blowfly Chrysomya latifrons inhabits fragmented rainforests, but shows no population structure

et al. 2023

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…S1). There was also seasonal variation in ambient temperature (See Dawson et al 2021a). Temperature influences decomposition progress, but TBS is a standardised decomposition metric, which can account, in part, for seasonal and temperature differences (Dawson et al 2021b).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insect abundance patterns on vertebrate remains reveal carrion resource quality variation

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Resource quality is a key driver of species abundance and community structure. Carrion is unique among resources due to its high nutritional quality, rapidly changing nature, and the diverse community of organisms it supports. Yet the role resource quality plays in driving variation in abundance patterns of carrion-associated species remains poorly studied. Here we investigate how species abundances change with a measure of resource change, and interpret these findings to determine how species differ in their association with carrion that changes in quality over time. We conducted field succession experiments using pigs and humans over two winters and one summer. We quantified the effect of total body score, an objective measure of resource change, on adult insect abundance using generalised additive models. For each species, phases of increasing abundance likely indicated attraction to a high-quality resource, and length of abundance maxima indicated optimal oviposition and feeding time. Some species such as the beetle Necrobia rufipes had a rapid spike in abundance, suggesting a narrow window of opportunity for carrion resource exploitation, while species like the wasp Nasonia vitripennis had a gradual change in abundance, indicating a wide window of resource exploitation. Different abundance patterns were also observed between species occurring on pigs and humans, suggesting cadaver type is an important aspect of resource quality. Our findings show that species abundances, unlike species occurrences, can reveal additional detail about species exploitation of carrion and provide information about how resource quality may drive competition and variation in insect community succession.

show abstract

“…The requirements of minimum mass size for exodigestion or presence of heterospecific larvae are likely reasons why Ch. rufifacies generally acts as a secondary coloniser-laying larvae later in the decomposition process, even though adult flies arrive at carrion relatively early (Dawson et al 2021a). It is unknown what morphological or physiological factors limit C. rufifacies exodigestion capabilities on fresh carrion, but these might relate to the larval mouthparts or the type of enzymes produced (Shiao and Yeh, 2008).…”

Section: Chrysomya Rufifacies Is Dependent On Larval Mass Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

Priority effects and density promote coexistence between the facultative predator Chrysomya rufifacies and its competitor Calliphora stygia

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Highly competitive ephemeral resources like carrion tend to support much greater diversity relative to longer-lived resources. The coexistence of diverse communities on short-lived carrion is a delicate balance, maintained by several processes including competition. Despite this balance, few studies have investigated the effect of competition on carrion, limiting our understanding of how competition drives coexistence. We investigated how priority effects and larval density influence coexistence between two blowfly species, the facultative predator Chrysomya rufifacies and its competitor Calliphora stygia, which occupy broadly similar niches but differ in their ecological strategies for exploiting carrion. We examined how adult oviposition, larval survival, developmental duration, and adult fitness were affected by the presence of differently aged heterospecific larval masses, and how these measures varied under three larval densities. We found C. rufifacies larval survival was lowest in conspecific masses with low larval densities. In heterospecific masses, survival increased, particularly at high larval density, with priority effects having minimal effect, suggesting a dependency on collective exodigestion. For C. stygia, we found survival to be constant across larval densities in a conspecific mass. In heterospecific masses, survival decreased drastically when C. rufifacies arrived first, regardless of larval density, suggesting C. stygia is temporally constrained to avoid competition with C. rufifacies. Neither species appeared to completely outcompete the other, as they were either constrained by density requirements (C. rufifacies) or priority effects (C. stygia). Our results provide new mechanistic insights into the ecological processes allowing for coexistence on a competitively intense, ephemeral resource such as carrion.

show abstract

Field succession studies and casework can help to identify forensically useful Diptera

Cited by 9 publications

References 67 publications

The blowfly Chrysomya latifrons inhabits fragmented rainforests, but shows no population structure

The blowfly Chrysomya latifrons inhabits fragmented rainforests, but shows no population structure

Insect abundance patterns on vertebrate remains reveal carrion resource quality variation

Priority effects and density promote coexistence between the facultative predator Chrysomya rufifacies and its competitor Calliphora stygia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About