All insects matter: a review of 160 entomology cases from 1993 to 2007 in Switzerland-part I (Diptera).

Necrophagous Diptera are the most important group of insects used for the purposes of forensic entomology. While the most utilized fly family in this context is the family Calliphoridae, there are several other families that can be of great importance during real-case investigations. This article analyzes the necrophagous flies of all families recorded from 160 real cases in Switzerland between 1993 and 2007. A total of 56 species belonging to 16 families was identified with Calliphoridae being the most dominant family (90.63% of all cases), followed by Muscidae (26.25%), Sarcophagidae (19.38%), Phoridae (14.38%), and Fanniidae (12.50%). For specimens that were difficult to identify morphologically, a new PCR primer has been specifically designed for the amplification of a short, informative COI barcode in degraded museum samples of forensically important Diptera taxa. The richest family in terms of species was the family Muscidae with 16 species. Fannia fuscula (Fallen) and Fannia monilis (Haliday) were recorded from human cadavers for the first time. The study highlights the importance of different fly families in forensic investigation, enhancing our comprehension of their prevalence and dispersion in real cases in Central Europe. The results pave the way for additional exploration, especially regarding the involvement of less frequently observed species in forensic entomology.

Spatio-temporal distribution and habitat preference of necrophagous Calliphoridae based on 160 real cases from Switzerland.

Necrophagous blowflies (Diptera: Calliphoridae) are of great importance particularly during investigations of suspicious deaths. Many studies have analyzed the distribution of blowflies based on pig experiments and baited trapping; however, data from real case scenarios are rarely used. In this article, the distribution of blowflies found during investigations of 160 real cases during 1993-2007 in Switzerland is evaluated based on habitat, altitude, and season. Ten species of blowflies were present in 145 out of the 160 cases. The most common species was Calliphora vicina, which occurs throughout the year and was present in 69 % of all cases. Lucilia sericata, Calliphora vomitoria, and L. caesar were identified among the rest of the flies as species of great forensic importance mainly due to their distributional patterns. After a comparison with a similar dataset from Frankfurt, Germany, some surprising differences were determined and discussed. The biggest discrepancies between our dataset and the German dataset were in the occurrences of L. sericata (30 % vs. 86 %, respectively), Phormia regina (5 % vs. 43 %), and L. ampullacea (1 % vs. 45 %). The life-history strategies and intraspecific behavioral variability of blowflies remain understudied, although they can be essential for an unbiased approach during a death investigation. Further research and comparison of occurrence patterns across the area of distribution of blowflies are therefore needed and recommended.

Spatiotemporal variation in the role of floral traits in shaping tropical plant-pollinator interactions.

The pollination syndrome hypothesis predicts that plants pollinated by the same pollinator group bear convergent combinations of specific floral functional traits. Nevertheless, some studies have shown that these combinations predict pollinators with relatively low accuracy. This discrepancy may be caused by changes in the importance of specific floral traits for different pollinator groups and under different environmental conditions. To explore this, we studied pollination systems and floral traits along an elevational gradient on Mount Cameroon during wet and dry seasons. Using Random Forest (Machine Learning) models, allowing the ranking of traits by their relative importance, we demonstrated that some floral traits are more important than others for pollinators. However, the distribution and importance of traits vary under different environmental conditions. Our results imply the need to improve our trait-based understanding of plant-pollinator interactions to better inform the debate surrounding the pollination syndrome hypothesis.

Revisiting the concept of entomotoxicology.

Until now, the term entomotoxicology has only been used in medico-legal sciences. However, entomotoxicology as a whole has a much wider scope and forensic entomotoxicology is just one of its branches. Based on the literature a wider definition of the term is presented. Today, we can distinguish two major branches of entomotoxicology: 1) Forensic entomotoxicology, which uses the insects as evidence of the presence of xenobiotics in decomposing tissue during an investigation and 2) Environmental entomotoxicology, which uses the insects as bioindicators of environmental pollution in non-criminal circumstances. While forensic entomotoxicology is a relatively new discipline, research in environmental entomotoxicology began as far back as the 1920s. A review of the work in entomotoxicology from the last 6 years is presented, covering several interesting new trends. This article aims to redefine entomotoxicology, which should increase awareness to bring more collaborations and multidisciplinary between related scientific fields.