Laboratory of Criminalistics, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland.
Department of Animal Taxonomy and Ecology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland.
Med Vet Entomol. 2023 Dec;37(4):705-714. doi: 10.1111/mve.12674. Epub 2023 Jun 19.
Recent discoveries have shown that the physiological age at eclosion of forensically useful beetles differs between males and females and between beetles of various sizes. Accordingly, it was postulated that the size and sex of the beetles at eclosion may be used to calibrate their age, which may improve the accuracy of age (and post-mortem interval) estimates in forensic entomology. In this study, we derived thermal summation models for the eclosion for the Central European population of carrion beetles Thanatophilus sinuatus (Fabricius, 1775), (Staphylinidae: Silphinae), and tested the usefulness of sex and size for the calibration of beetle age at eclosion. Although in previous developmental studies, the beetles were reared individually, we reared them in larval aggregations, since in natural conditions T. sinuatus beetles are gregarious. Weak (r between 5% and 13%) negative correlations were observed between the size and age of T. sinuatus males or females at eclosion, demonstrating that calibration of age by beetle size and sex may bring only minimal benefits regarding the accuracy of age estimation in this species. However, it may still be worthwhile in the case of extremely large or small beetles. Moreover, the total development times recorded in this study were much shorter than in the previous T. sinuatus study, at 14°C by about 15 days and at 26°C by about 2 days. These differences emphasise the importance of gregariousness for the development of carrion beetles, and at the same time highlight the need for the ecologically-relevant protocols of development studies in forensic entomology.
最近的发现表明，法医有用的甲虫在出壳时的生理年龄在雄性和雌性之间以及各种大小的甲虫之间存在差异。因此，有人推测，出壳时甲虫的大小和性别可以用来校准它们的年龄，这可能会提高法医昆虫学中年龄（和死后间隔）估计的准确性。在这项研究中，我们推导了中欧腐肉甲虫 Thanatophilus sinuatus（Fabricius，1775）（鞘翅目：Silphinae）种群的出壳热总和模型，并测试了性别和大小在出壳时校准甲虫年龄的有用性。尽管在之前的发育研究中，甲虫是单独饲养的，但我们将它们聚集在幼虫中饲养，因为在自然条件下，T. sinuatus 甲虫是群居的。在出壳时，T. sinuatus 雄性或雌性甲虫的大小和年龄之间观察到微弱的负相关（r 值在 5%到 13%之间），表明通过甲虫的大小和性别来校准年龄，对于该物种的年龄估计的准确性可能只有最小的益处。然而，对于体型非常大或非常小的甲虫，这可能仍然是值得的。此外，与之前在 14°C 下进行的 T. sinuatus 研究相比，本研究中记录的总发育时间要短得多，大约缩短了 15 天，在 26°C 下大约缩短了 2 天。这些差异强调了群居性对腐肉甲虫发育的重要性，同时也强调了法医昆虫学中发展研究需要生态相关协议的重要性。
