Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Forensic entomology
Summary
Forensic entomology is the scientific study of the colonization of a dead body by arthropods. This includes the study of insect types commonly associated with cadavers, their respective life cycles, their ecological presences in a given environment, as well as the changes in insect assemblage with the progression of decomposition. Insect succession patterns are identified based on the time a given species of insect spends in a given developmental stage, and how many generations have been produced since the insects introduction to a given food source. Insect development alongside environmental data such as temperature and vapor density, can be used to estimate the time since death, due to the fact that flying insects are attracted to a body immediately after death. The identification of postmortem interval to aid in death investigations is the primary scope of this scientific field.
However, forensic entomology is not limited to homicides, it has also been used in cases of neglect and abuse, in toxicology contexts to detect the presence of drugs, and in dry shelf food contamination incidents. Equally, insect assemblages present on a body, can be used to approximate a given location, as certain insects may be unique to certain areas. Therefore, forensic entomology can be divided into three subfields: urban, stored-product and medico-legal/medico-criminal entomology.
Historically, there have been several accounts of applications for, and experimentation with, forensic entomology. Aside from an initial case report in China from the 13th century, the primitive observation and correlation between arthropods and forensic contexts were documented in Germany and France. This was conducted during a mass exhumation in the late 1880s by Hofmann and Reinhard. However, only in the last 30 years has forensic entomology been systematically explored as a feasible source for evidence in criminal investigations. Through their own experiments and interest in arthropods and death, Sung Tzu, Francesco Redi, Bergeret d’Arbois, Jean Pierre Mégnin and the physiologist Hermann Reinhard have helped to lay the foundations for today's modern forensic entomology.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.