African carrion ecosystems and their insect communities in relation to forensic entomology

Villet, Martin H

Title: African carrion ecosystems and their insect communities in relation to forensic entomology
Creator: Villet, Martin H
Subject: To be catalogued
Date: 2011
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/442439
Identifier: vital:73984
Identifier: http://www.globalsciencebooks.info/Online/GSBOnline/OnlinePT_5_1.html
Description: African carrion communities contain representatives of the same families that occur in carrion communities on other continents. Checklists and identification guides are tabulated, and the natural histories of core members of the terrestrial community are outlined. Because of strong phylogenetic trends in the biology of the families, the species are effectively ecological surrogates of their relatives elsewhere. These phylogenetic trends also allow the definition of a set of guilds of functionally equivalent species that unify the study of carrion communities world-wide, and a revised suite of guilds is described with both synecological and forensic purposes in mind. Although the decomposition process has been arbitrarily subdivided into stages, they have little direct relation to the dynamics of the carrion community, and should be treated as landmarks rather than phases. Community turnover follows a qualitatively predictable succession, with the greatest species richness and diversity around the ecotone-like transition from ‘wet-phase’ to ‘dry-phase’ carrion habitats. These habitats are differentiated along interacting ecological gradients of dietary quality, competition, and risk of predation, which are important to the core guilds. Competition and predation have strong effects on population dynamics of community members, but link particular species only weakly, so that the succession pattern largely reflects the autecology of the individual species. Discrete waves of species are absent, which increases the temporal resolution, and therefore the forensic value, of the succession as a ‘clock’. The forensic significance of various aspects of community and trophic dynamics are discussed, and means of applying ecological theory to investigations are reviewed.
Format: 15 pages, pdf
Language: English
Relation: Pest Technology, Villet, M.H., 2011. African carrion ecosystems and their insect communities in relation to forensic entomology. Pest Technol, 5(1), pp.1-15, Pest Technology volume 5 number 1 1 15 2011
Rights: Publisher
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the author

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Villet, Martin Herrer (Prof)

SDG 15. Life On Land

RU Department of Zoology and Entomology

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