Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity "Naturalis", P.O. Box 9517, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Forensic Sci Int. 2011 Jul 15;210(1-3):91-5. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2011.02.003. Epub 2011 Mar 3.
The beetle family Cholevidae (Coleoptera: Staphylinoidea), sometimes viewed as the subfamily Cholevinae of the Leiodidae, consists of some 1700 species worldwide. With the exception of specialized cave-dwelling species and species living in bird and mammal nests and burrows, the species are generalized soil-dwellers that, at least in temperate regions, are mostly found on vertebrate cadavers. Although they have been regularly reported from human corpses, and offer potential because of many species' peak activity in the cold season, they have not been a focus of forensic entomologists so far. This is probably due to their small size and the difficulty in identifying the adults and their larvae. In this paper, we show that DNA-barcoding can help make this group of necrobiont beetles available as a tool for forensic research. We collected 86 specimens of 20 species of the genera Catops, Fissocatops, Apocatops, Choleva, Nargus, Ptomaphagus, and Sciodrepoides from the Netherlands and France and show that a broad "barcoding gap" allows almost all species to be easily and unambiguously identified by the sequence of the "barcoding gene" cytochrome c oxidase I (COI). This opens up the possibility of adding Cholevidae to the set of insect taxa routinely used in forensic entomology.
鞘翅目芫菁科（Coleoptera：Staphylinoidea），有时被视为猎蝽科的芫菁亚科，在世界范围内包括约 1700 种。除了专门的洞穴居住物种和生活在鸟类和哺乳动物巢和洞穴中的物种外，这些物种都是广义的土壤居住者，至少在温带地区，它们主要存在于脊椎动物的尸体上。尽管它们经常从人类尸体上被报道，并由于许多物种在寒冷季节的活动高峰而具有潜力，但到目前为止，法医昆虫学家并没有将它们作为研究重点。这可能是由于它们的体型较小，以及识别成虫及其幼虫的难度。在本文中，我们表明 DNA 条形码技术可以帮助将这组腐生甲虫作为法医研究的工具。我们从荷兰和法国收集了 86 个 Catops、Fissocatops、Apocatops、Choleva、Nargus、Ptomaphagus 和 Sciodrepoides 属的 20 种物种的标本，结果表明，一个广泛的“条形码间隙”使得几乎所有物种都可以通过“条形码基因”细胞色素 c 氧化酶 I（COI）的序列轻松且明确地识别。这为将芫菁科添加到法医昆虫学中常规使用的昆虫分类群中开辟了可能性。
