Department of Entomology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alabama, AL, USA.
J Med Entomol. 2021 Jul 16;58(4):1654-1662. doi: 10.1093/jme/tjab081.
A basic tenet of forensic entomology is development data of an insect can be used to predict the time of colonization (TOC) by insect specimens collected from remains, and this prediction is related to the time of death and/or time of placement (TOP). However, few datasets have been evaluated to determine their accuracy or precision. The black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens (L.) (Diptera: Stratiomyidae) is recognized as an insect of forensic importance. This study examined the accuracy and precision of several development datasets for the black soldier fly by estimating the TOP of five sets of human and three sets of swine remains in San Marcos and College Station, TX, respectively. Data generated from this study indicate only one of these datasets consistently (time-to-prepupae 52%; time-to-eclosion 75%) produced TOP estimations that occurred within a day of the actual TOP of the remains. It is unknown if the precolonization interval (PreCI) of this species is long, but it has been observed that the species can colonize within 6 d after death. This assumption remains untested by validation studies. Accounting for this PreCI improved accuracy for the time-to-prepupae group, but reduced accuracy in the time-to-eclosion group. The findings presented here highlight a need for detailed, forensic-based development data for the black soldier fly that can reliably and accurately be used in casework. Finally, this study outlines the need for a basic understanding of the timing of resource utilization (i.e., duration of the PreCI) for forensically relevant taxa so that reasonable corrections may be made to TOC as related to minimum postmortem interval (mPMI) estimates.
法医昆虫学的一个基本原理是，昆虫的发育数据可用于预测从遗骸中收集的昆虫标本的定殖时间 (TOC)，而这种预测与死亡时间和/或放置时间 (TOP) 有关。然而，很少有数据集经过评估以确定其准确性或精密度。黑皮蠹（Hermetia illucens (L.)）（双翅目：Stratiomyidae）被认为是一种具有法医学重要性的昆虫。本研究通过估计在德克萨斯州圣马科斯和学院站的五个人类和三组猪遗骸的 TOP，检查了几个黑皮蠹发育数据集的准确性和精密度。本研究产生的数据表明，这些数据集中只有一个数据集始终（预蛹期 52%；羽化期 75%）产生的 TOP 估计值与遗骸的实际 TOP 相差一天之内。尚不清楚该物种的预定殖间隔（PreCI）是否很长，但已观察到该物种在死亡后 6 天内即可定殖。这一假设仍未通过验证研究得到检验。考虑到这个 PreCI，预蛹期组的准确性得到了提高，但羽化期组的准确性降低了。本研究结果强调了需要对黑皮蠹进行详细的、基于法医的发育数据，以便在实际案例中能够可靠且准确地使用。最后，本研究概述了需要对法医学上相关分类群的资源利用时间（即 PreCI 的持续时间）有基本的了解，以便可以对 TOC 进行合理的修正，使其与最小死后间隔（mPMI）估计相关。
