Tarone Aaron M, Foran David R
Department of Zoology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
J Forensic Sci. 2008 Jul;53(4):942-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1556-4029.2008.00744.x.
Forensic entomologists use blow fly development to estimate a postmortem interval. Although accurate, fly age estimates can be imprecise for older developmental stages and no standard means of assigning confidence intervals exists. Presented here is a method for modeling growth of the forensically important blow fly Lucilia sericata, using generalized additive models (GAMs). Eighteen GAMs were created to predict the extent of juvenile fly development, encompassing developmental stage, length, weight, strain, and temperature data, collected from 2559 individuals. All measures were informative, explaining up to 92.6% of the deviance in the data, though strain and temperature exerted negligible influences. Predictions made with an independent data set allowed for a subsequent examination of error. Estimates using length and developmental stage were within 5% of true development percent during the feeding portion of the larval life cycle, while predictions for postfeeding third instars were less precise, but within expected error.
法医昆虫学家利用丽蝇的发育情况来估计死后间隔时间。尽管准确，但对于较老的发育阶段，蝇龄估计可能不够精确，而且不存在确定置信区间的标准方法。本文介绍了一种使用广义相加模型（GAM）对具有法医重要性的丝光绿蝇的生长进行建模的方法。创建了18个GAM来预测幼蝇的发育程度，涵盖了从2559只个体收集的发育阶段、体长、体重、品系和温度数据。所有测量指标都提供了有用信息，能够解释数据中高达92.6%的偏差，不过品系和温度的影响可忽略不计。使用独立数据集进行的预测使得随后能够对误差进行检验。在幼虫生命周期的取食阶段，利用体长和发育阶段进行的估计与实际发育百分比的误差在5%以内，而对取食后三龄幼虫的预测则不够精确，但在预期误差范围内。
