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International Journal of Legal Medicine

, Volume 133, Issue 2, pp 651–660 | Cite as

Predatory behavior of Synthesiomyia nudiseta larvae (Diptera: Muscidae) on several necrophagous blowfly species (Diptera: Calliphoridae)

  • Tania IvorraEmail author
  • Anabel Martínez-Sánchez
  • Santos Rojo
Original Article
First Online:

Abstract

Intraguild interactions play a prominent role in sarcosaprophagous communities, so intraspecific and interspecific competition phenomena between fly larvae take place. Synthesiomyia nudiseta is a species that has recently been recorded on human corpses in Europe, and it has been cited in forensic cases in Spain and Italy. The mature larvae are known to be facultative predators on necrophagous fly larvae, but their role as predators is unknown. The aim of this paper is to investigate the predatory behavior of S. nudiseta on the most abundant blowfly larvae in sarcosaprophagous communities in southwestern Europe (i.e., Chrysomya albiceps, Lucilia sericata, and Calliphora vicina). Intraspecific and interspecific competition experiments were carried out to study the effect of this species in the necrophagous diptera community. First-instar larvae were placed in plastic cups with the same amount of pig liver (15 g) at different densities (50, 100, 150, and 300 individuals/cup). Mortality in blowflies increased when S. nudiseta larvae were present: up to 98.40% in Ch. albiceps, 89.60% in L. sericata, and 84.93% in C. vicina. Pre-imaginal developmental time and adult wing size were analyzed and compared under each of the intraspecific and interspecific conditions; both variables were affected by competition in all cases. The implications of the presence of S. nudiseta for sarcosaprophagous community dynamics and its effect on the estimation of postmortem interval (PMI) are discussed.

Keywords

Calliphora vicina Chrysomya albiceps Lucilia sericata Synthesiomyia nudiseta Intraspecific competition Interspecific competition 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This work belongs to Tania Ivorra PhD and was partially supported by the projects GV/2011/039 (Generalitat Valenciana) and GRE09-27 (University of Alicante). We are very grateful to F.J. Jiménez, S. García, and A. González for their help in the maintenance of colonies and with the laboratory experiments in this work.

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© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Environmental Sciences and Natural ResourcesUniversity of AlicanteAlicanteSpain

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