Forensic Entomology Paper

A brief insight into forensic Entomology

1. Introduction

In this paper I will start out by giving an overview on what forensic entomology is, give a short insight in its history and explain in what ways it contributes to the interpretation of evidence. Furthermore I will talk about the specific insects that are of particular relevance and give a brief idea of how do collect these in order to examine them.

2. Forensic Entomology

Dr. Jason Byrd defines basic Entomology as the study of insects, in particular “those organisms that have an exoskeleton, 6 legs, 3 body segments, 1 pair of antenna, and 1 pair of compound eyes.” Forensic entomology uses this in-formation on insects and their lifecycles in order interpret evidence and apply to

(Byrd 2013)

The earliest recorded case that used forensic entomology dates back to the 13th century China, when an unknown farmer had murdered a man with a sickle. The suspects had to gather together and show their sickles; one had particularly a lot of blowflies on it due to invisible blood traces and the owner was prosecuted for the murder of the man. (Amendt, Krettek and Zehner 2004) Development in forensic entomology took a rest until 1668 when Fran-cesco L. Redi discovered that larvae developed from fly eggs while examining decaying meat. (Byrd 2013) In 1735 a man named Linnaeus made a system of classification and was one of the first to identify important species of flies. (Gennard 2013, p. 7) Futhermore Grennard describes a “particularly important legal case” in 1850 of a mummified infant found behind

(Byrd 2013) Often insects are the only indicator for the length of death if the body has been dead for more than 72 hours. By taking the life cycle of certain in-sects such as the blowfly under consideration as well as succession the esti-mated time of death can be calculated. (Byrd, 2013) A lot of times insects can help identify wounds as well, since some of them tend to gather in moist crev-ices and openings. If there are insects found on bodies that do not match the typical insects of the surroundings, this may be an indicator that the body has been moved also if insects tend to gather on body parts where they usually don’t this may suggest that the body has been moved. Furthermore, insects may be of importance when dealing with abuse and neglect cases as well as food contamination cases. Another important use of insects is for the identifi-cation of drugs and toxins in the body, this branch of forensic entomology is called forensic Entomotoxicology. Often blowfly maggots and larvae can be tested for drug and toxins when the body itself cannot be tested for such resi-dues any longer. (Fraser, I.T. 2015. Pers. Comm. Sept.