Decomposed liver has a significantly adverse affect on the development rate of the blowfly Calliphora vicina

The development rate of immature Calliphora vicina reared on decomposed liver was significantly slower, by as much as 30 h (55.4 % of total development time) for mid-sized larvae, and 71 h (35.0 %) and 58 h (14.6 %) if using times to the onset of pupariation and eclosion, respectively, than those of immatures that developed on fresh whole pig's liver. Development rates of larvae reared on decomposed liver were also slower than those of larvae reared on minced pig's liver and frozen/thawed pig's liver. These results suggest that any estimate of minimum post-mortem interval may result in an over estimate if the blowflies used were developing on an already decomposed body.

Citation

Richards, C.S., Rowlinson, C.C., Cuttiford, L. et al. Decomposed liver has a significantly adverse affect on the development rate of the blowfly Calliphora vicina . Int J Legal Med 127, 259–262 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-012-0697-3

Type

Journal Article

Item Description

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
NHM Repository

ISSN

0937-9827

EISSN

1437-1596