Orientador: Patricia Jacqueline Thyssen / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Biologia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-24T16:08:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Mira_CaueTrani_M.pdf: 3071912 bytes, checksum: c01afc0e4e37aabc1ba91ac542ea964f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Os dípteros estão associados aos diversos ambientes humanos podendo causar danos para a saúde pública, perdas econômicas ou, por outro lado, prestar auxílio dentro do âmbito médico-legal ao serem utilizados para estimar o tempo de óbito em casos de morte suspeita. Muitos levantamentos faunísticos de dípteros que têm sido realizados até o momento no Brasil são precários por relatarem a presença de espécimes até níveis taxonômicos superiores ao de espécie, dadas as dificuldades encontradas como ausência de chaves taxonômicas para certos grupos e insuficiência na descrição de caracteres. Assim, o avanço de quaisquer outros trabalhos que queiram investigar a biologia, ecologia ou dinâmica desses organismos na natureza também estará prejudicado. As chaves convencionais para identificação de espécies de Fanniidae (Diptera: Muscomorpha) são escassas, restritas a uma pequena região geográfica ou limitada para apenas um sexo (macho ou fêmea). A chave interativa, construída com auxílio de bases computacionais, pode representar uma alternativa relevante para uma melhor compreensão dos aspectos taxonômicos ainda pouco esclarecidos dentro deste grupo. Adicionalmente, a interatividade representa um processo de maior flexibilidade na consulta dos caracteres, inserção de fotografias e detalhes pormenorizados em glossários, promovendo identificações mais acuradas. Assim, neste estudo foram levantados os caracteres específicos para 21 espécies do gênero Fannia (Muscomorpha: Diptera, Fanniidae), e incluídos caracteres que possibilitam a separação entre este gênero e Euryomma. Foram selecionadas espécies listadas na literatura como tendo importância nas áreas médica, veterinária e forense de diversos ambientes e localidades que compõem a região Sudeste do Brasil. Ao todo 38 caracteres morfológicos encontram-se listados na chave interativa elaborada com o auxílio do programa LUCID®. A partir do levantamento de dados das espécies para construção da chave observou-se que Fannia carvalhoi Couri 2005 constitui registro de nova ocorrência para a região amostrada neste estudo. O trabalho final encontra-se disponível e publicado na web / Abstract: Species of Diptera associated with several human environments and may cause harm to public health, economic losses or on the other hand, assist in the forensic context when used to estimate the time of death in cases of suspicious death. Many dipteran fauna surveys that have been conducted so far in Brazil are precarious for reporting the presence of specimens taxonomic given the difficulties encountered such as a lack of taxonomic keys for certain groups and insufficiency in describing characters. Thus, the advancement of any other work that want to investigate the biology, ecology and dynamics of these organisms in nature will also be harmed. Conventional keys for identification of species of Fanniidae (Diptera: Muscomorpha) are scarce, restricted to a small geographic region or limited to only one gender (male or female). The interactive key, built with the aid of computational bases, may represent a relevant alternative to a better understanding of taxonomic aspects still not clarified within this group. In addition, interactivity is a process of greater flexibility in the consultation of the characters, insert photos and full details on glossaries, promoting more accurate identifications. In this study have been raised the specific characters for 21 species of the genus Fannia (Muscomorpha: Diptera, Fanniidae), and included characters that allow the separation between this genre and Euryomma. Were selected species listed in the literature as having importance in medical, veterinary and forensic areas of diverse environments and locales that compose the Southeast region of Brazil. Altogether 38 morphological characters are listed in the interactive key elaborated with the assistance of LUCID® software. From the survey data for the construction of key species it was observed that Fannia carvalhoi Couri 2005 establishes new record for the region sampled in this study. The final work is available and published on the web / Mestrado / Biodiversidade Animal / Mestre em Biologia Animal

Necrophilous insects, if correctly identified, can provide useful forensic information. Research in this area has focussed on flies and beetles remain comparatively under-studied, partly because some adult carrion beetles are difficult to identify morphologically, as are their juvenile stages, often requiring specialist expertise in both cases. Molecular taxonomy has been proposed as a solution to these problems. DNA “barcodes" are short fragments of mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) DNA that are anticipated to delineate species. This approach is becoming increasingly popular, but has been met with varying enthusiasm from taxonomists. This thesis examines their use in identifying forensically significant beetles.The DNA barcodes of 234 specimens of 25 forensically significant southern African beetle species from seven families (Cleridae, Dermestidae, Silphidae, Staphylinidae, Scarabaeidae, Trogidae and Histeridae) were obtained. Thirty-three initial barcode amplification failures were overcome by using primers other than the standard Folmer pair, undermining the barcode concept’s hope of universal primers that would allow even non-specialists to produce barcodes. Another 150 specimens (64%) entirely failed to yield barcodes, including 18 fresh specimens of three species of Trogidae, implying another lack of universality of the barcoding protocol. The majority of the beetles clustered with confamilials on neighbour-joining and maximum likelihood trees, but 1.3% of the barcodes failed to cluster with their respective families, raising questions concerning the associating power of barcodes. The identification tools of the GenBank and BOLD on-line DNA sequence databases identified 21% of the specimens to the species level, 6% of them correctly. There was evidence of a paralogous sequence in the Cleridae that, while supporting identification now that it has been associated with a morphological identification, would hamper attempts at identification by clustering or phylogenetic analysis.Distance and haplotype network analyses of the barcodes of six widespread species showed that they are not geographically structured. Barcodes are thus unlikely to be indicators of the region of origin of a species and will not determine whether a corpse has been relocated after death. To assess whether a different mitochondrial DNA fragment might address (some of) these problems, a 2.2 kb fragment extending from the 5’ end of the COI gene to the 3’ end of the Cytochrome Oxidase II (COII) gene was analysed for nine species. It was found that, for Dermestidae, Scarabaeidae and Histeridae, higher degrees of diversity occurred downstreamof the barcode region, but the region of highest diversity in the Cleridae was in the barcode region. Thus, finding a more reliable fragment along the COI-COII region for each family may make robust and guaranteed DNA-based identification of these beetles more likely. The possibility of a forensic specimen being incorrectly or not identified based on its barcode alone exists in about 40% of cases, even with the new barcodes reported here. Forensic science sets a very high bar in assessing the performance of its techniques, and it is concluded that barcodes currently have unsettling failure rates as court-worthy evidence.

No description available.

This investigation explored the environmental and physiological factors affecting adult blow fly (Diptera: Calliphoridae) arrival and attendance at pig (Sus scrofa domesticus L.) carcasses in Brazos Co, TX in the summer and winter, and validated a new technique for estimating the pre-colonization interval. It also examined how the offspring of said blow flies compensate for adverse developmental conditions such as starvation or the presence of older competitors by determining the function of minimum viable weight, critical weight, and the terminal growth period in Cochliomyia macellaria (F.) (Diptera: Calliphoridae). Adult blow fly carcass attendance is poorly explained by temperature, wind speed, ambient light intensity, or body size for either winter or summer-active species. Time of day explained approximately 10% in carcass size variation for all four of the most common species. For summer flies, the degree of ovarian development changed significantly from 96%/98% fully developed on day 1 postmortem to 7%/2% fully developed on day 2 postmortem for C. macellaria and Chrysomya rufifacies (Macquart) iv respectively. Using the binomial distribution, the minimum postmortem interval was correctly estimated for 4/6 validation tests. Minimum viable weight for C. macellaria was found to be ~ 0.02 g, and was stable under conditions of starvation and simulated competition. Under starvation conditions, time to pupariation was not altered, whereas under simulated competition, growth rate was increased and terminal growth period shortened. Starved flies under simulated competition entered the pupal state ~12 h faster than starved flies without competition, but required ~12 longer to complete development. These effects should be considered when estimating post-colonization intervals.

Carrion decomposition is an essential ecosystem function as it is an important component of nutrient cycling. Carrion decomposition has primarily been attributed to insect consumption, with little attention given to microbial communities or their potential interactions with insects. The first objective was to use passive insect-trapping methods to assess primary colonizer communities on swine carcasses between two treatments: 1) carrion with access to insects and 2) carrion excluded from insect access for five days using exclusion cages. Despite similarities between succession patterns within each treatment, carcasses initially exposed to insects had significantly fewer insect taxa. Therefore, collections of adult insect communities associated with carrion are promising as an indication of whether or not there has been a delay in insect colonization of a resource. There has yet to be a study documenting bacterial communities during carrion decomposition. The second objective was to describe bacterial community succession and composition during decomposition in the presence and absence of naturally occurring insects. Total genomic DNA was used to identify bacterial community composition via a modified bacterial tagged encoded FLX amplicon pyrosequencing. I obtained 378,904 sequences and documented distinct bacterial community successional trajectories associated with insect access and exclusion carcasses. By the fifth day of decomposition, Proteus was the dominant (72%) bacterial genus on exclusion carcasses while Psychrobacillus (58%) and Ignatzschineria (18%) were dominant bacterial genera on insect carcasses. These data are the first to document bacterial community composition and succession on carrion. My final objective was to assess microbial community function in response to carrion insect colonization using metabolic profiling. I characterized microbial community metabolic function in the presence and absence of the primary necrophagous insects. I documented significant microbial community metabolic profile changes during active decomposition of carcasses. Mean carcass microbial community metabolic function with insect access continuously decreased over decomposition during both field seasons. Thus demonstrating microbial metabolic activity may have discriminatory power to differentiate early and late stages of decomposition. Overall, my data contributes to an understudied area of microbial research important to organic matter decomposition, forensic entomology, and microbial-insect ecological interactions.

Nicrophorus americanus is a federally endangered species whose range has decreased dramatically since the 1920s. It is a nocturnal species that is only active from May to September when temperatures reach at least 15.5°C for three nights in a row. It once ranged throughout North America, from Maine and the southern parts of Canada, west to South Dakota and south to Texas. The historic Texas population consists of four Texas specimens from the 1880s residing at the Philadelphia Academy of Science Invertebrate Collection. Since then, there were no confirmed specimens in Texas, until 2003 when a single individual was found in Lamar County, Texas. The population discovered in Lamar County has been on a steady decrease from 2005, 223 individuals captured, until 2008 only 8 individuals captured. Since 2008, no individuals have been captured in Texas, despite intense surveys. It is possible that the Texas population is a sink population with the Oklahoma population to its north, acting as the source. Genetic analysis of the Texas and Oklahoma populations would help to answer this question and analysis of the entire population may answer questions to why the species declined leaving only the peripheral populations. The specific habitat variables that caused the population to re-colonize and go extinct in Texas are unclear, but when determined could play a critical role in managing the population. / text

No presenta resumen. / Revisión por pares

This master thesis deals with succession and succession mechanisms of beetles (Coleoptera) on carrions of small vertebrates. As a model sample of small carrion a small mouse of weight 20 grams was chosen. In 2014 two experiments occurred. The first one studied the succession of a beetle community in dependence on seasonality and time of death of the sample. The second experiment was aimed to survey the blocking effect of an early insect succession on the final beetle community composition on carrions. It turned out, that during decomposition of the carrion the overall amount of beetles raised equally to the guild of necrophagous beetles. Change of the species spectrum during succession was not statistically confirmed. On the other hand, the effect of seasonality was clear as during the season the abundance and the amount of species increased. The proportion of trophic guilds changed significantly, necrophagous beetles were the most dominant part of the community towards the end of the season. Equally, the taxonomic composition of the community also changed during the season. The seasonal dynamics of carrion beetles was clear; Nicrophorus vespillo (Linnaeus, 1758) and N. investigator Zetterstedt, 1824 showed their peaks in spring and summer while N. humator (Gleditsch, 1767) and N. vespilloides...

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Orientador: Arício Xavier Linhares / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Biologia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T21:53:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Proencio_VanessaMinhoto_M.pdf: 2983676 bytes, checksum: c8bd0965eae3ffccfd30f8656cf54e04 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Para estimar o intervalo pós-morte (IPM) e determinar a provável causa mortis, a ciência forense pode utilizar várias técnicas, sendo um exemplo a avaliação das fases de decomposição de um corpo. Estas fases podem ser influenciadas por fatores extrínsecos como o clima (temperatura e umidade), injúrias no corpo e por fatores intrínsecos, isto é, condições fisiológicas e metabólicas do próprio organismo e também pelo modo como ocorreu a morte. Além desta técnica a ciência forense pode utilizar a Entomologia Forense, através do estudo da fauna cadavérica e sua possível sucessão, para auxiliar nas estimativas de IPM e determinar a causa mortis. O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar a influência da carbonização na evolução das fases de decomposição, atratividade e possível padrão sucessional dos insetos. Foram utilizadas quatro carcaças de suínos (Sus scrofa L.), sendo duas no período mais quente e úmido do ano e duas no período mais frio e seco. Para cada período uma carcaça foi queimada com gasolina até o nível 2 da escala de carbonização de Crow-Glassman, sem que fosse totalmente destruída, e a outra, utilizada como controle. As carcaças foram expostas em área natural de mata e protegidas por gaiolas para evitar a ação de predadores. Imagens das fases de decomposição foram obtidas diariamente. Insetos imaturos foram coletados das carcaças e levados ao laboratório para posterior emergência dos adultos, contagem e identificação. Insetos adultos foram coletados utilizando uma rede entomológica e identificados no laboratório. Embora em alguns momentos ambas as carcaças estivessem na mesma fase de decomposição, houve um retardo na decomposição da carcaça carbonizada de 3 dias a partir do 5º estágio de decomposição em relação à carcaça controle na estação quente. Na estação fria este fato foi observado a partir do 3º estágio de decomposição, com uma média de atraso de 9 dias, sugerindo que a carbonização influencia no tempo de decomposição. Foi observada uma sucessão entomológica em ambas as carcaças (carbonizada e controle), apresentando um padrão diferente em cada estação do ano e relacionado ao modo de morte. A colonização por artrópodes mostrou-se diferente em ambas as carcaças demonstrando a influência da carbonização na atratividade e frequência de insetos, sugerindo que a espécie Hemilucilia semidiaphana pode ser considerada indicador forense para modo de morte, para região de mata e na estimativa de IPM, enquanto que a espécie Hemilucilia segmentaria pode ser usada como indicador forense para região de mata e na estimativa de IPM. Foi observado também que Chrysomya albiceps pode ser usada para a estimativa de IPM. Chrysomya putoria e Lucilia eximia podem ser utilizadas como indicadores forenses para modo de morte e estimativa de IPM. Espécies da família Sarcophagidae podem ser usadas como indicadores forenses para modo de morte e para a estimativa de IPM. Temperatura e umidade relativa do ar exerceram influência na atividade dos insetos e sobre a decomposição, retardando ou acelerando o processo. Este estudo mostra a importância da causa mortis, dos fatores abióticos, do tempo de decomposição e da entomofauna para o auxílio na estimativa do IPM / Abstract: To estimate the postmortem interval (PMI) and to determine the probable cause of death in forensic science several techniques can be used, such as the assessment of the stage of decomposition of a body. These stages may be affected by extrinsic factors such as meteorological conditions (temperature and humidity) and injuries on the body, and by intrinsic factors related to physiological and metabolic conditions of the body, and also by the circumstances of death. In addition, the study of the cadaveric arthropod fauna as well as its successional pattern may help to estimate the PMI and to determine the cause of death. The aim of this study was to assess: 1) the influence of carbonization in the carcass decomposition process; 2) the attractiveness exerted by the burned carcass to necrophagous insects, and 3) the successional pattern of necrophagous insects in the carcasses. Four pig (Sus scrofa L.), carcasses were used in the experiments: two in the hot and humid period of the year (summer) and two during the cold and dry period of the year (winter). For each period, one carcass was burned with gasoline up to level 2 of Crow-Glassman scale (CGS) and another, was used as control. The carcasses were exposed in a natural wooded area, and placed in wire cages tp prevent the access of large scavengers. Pictures of the stages of decomposition were taken daily. Maggots were collected daily from the carcasses and brought to the laboratory and kept until adult emergence, counted and identified. Adults were collected by using an entomological net and identified in the laboratory. Although both, control and burned carcasses, were at the same decomposition stage, there was a delay in the decomposition of the burned carcass of 3 days from the 5th stage of decomposition in relation to the carcass control in the hot season. In this cold season was observed from the 3rd stage of decomposition, with an average delay of 9 days suggesting that the carbonization influence the time of decomposition. Insect sucession was observed in both carcasses (burned and control), showing a different pattern in each season and related to the mode of death.The colonization by arthropods was different in both carcasses, showing an influence of burning in the attractiveness and occurrence of some insects, suggesting that the blowfly Hemilucilia semidiaphana, may be used as forensic indicator for the mode of death, wooded areas and estimates of PMI, while Hemilucilia segmentaria may be used as forensic indicator for wooded areas and estimates of PMI. It was also observed that Chrysomya albiceps may be used as forensic indicator to estimates of PMI. Chrysomya putoria and Lucilia eximia may be used as forensic indicators for mode of death and estimates of IPM. Species of the family Sarcophagidae may be used as forensic indicators for mode of death and to estimate of PMI. Temperature and relative humidity also had an important influence on the decomposition process, slowing or accelerating the process on both substrates, as well as influencing the activity of insects. This study reported the important influence exerted by the cause of death and the abiotic factors, on the time of decay and on the insect fauna. Therefore, these factors have to be taken into consideration for the determination of the PMI / Mestrado / Parasitologia / Mestre em Parasitologia