The community that progressively colonizes a decaying corpse can be considered a small ecosystem mostly composed of sarcosaprophagous arthropods belonging to the orders Diptera and Coleoptera. Studies on these species are often performed through animal models to obtain data on their succession, behaviour and life cycle, together with information on habitat, corpse conditions, season and association with other species. These data may be relevant for forensic investigations, especially concerning the estimation of Post Mortem Interval (PMI).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMyiasis is a type of parasitosis by larvae of Diptera that may affect vertebrates, including wild and domestic birds. Traumatic myiasis was discovered in a domestic goose, L. (Anseriformes: Anatidae), in June 2020 in a rural area of the region Calabria (Southern Italy).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe colonization of a human body by Necrodes littoralis (L.) (Coleoptera: Silphidae) is reported for the first time in Italy. This species is both necrophagous and predator of necrophagous fauna.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBurial could be used by criminals to conceal the bodies of victims, interfering with the succession of sarcosaprophagous fauna and with the evaluation of post-mortem interval. In Italy, no experimental investigation on arthropods associated with buried remains has been conducted to date. A first experimental study on arthropods associated with buried carcasses was carried out in a rural area of Arcavacata di Rende (Cosenza), Southern Italy, from November 2017 to May 2018.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDrug-induced phospholipidosis (PLD) is characterized by accumulation of phospholipids, the inducing drugs and lamellar inclusion bodies in the lysosomes of affected tissues. These side effects must be considered as early as possible during drug discovery, and, in fact, numerous in silico models designed to predict PLD have been published. However, the quality of any in silico model cannot be better than the quality of the experimental data set used to build it.
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