Later arrivers...

19 July 2007: Upper left, Stearibia nigriceps, a piophild fly; Upper right, Leptocera sp., a minute dung fly of the family Sphaeroceridae; Lower left, Nicrobia violaceae, a beetle of the family Cleridae; Lower right, another fly of the family Piophilidae, Prochyliza.

The flies and beetle illustrated above are common on both the pig and the bear carcass. They illustrate nicely the concept of change through time as they come after the initial wave of blow flies and house flies. They are adapted to the drying conditions encountered on an aging carcass, and take advantage of the areas of carcasses touching the ground. Here, it is moist, dark, and protected.

In terms of our use for determining a postmortem interval, these species are not as useful as blow flies. But, they their presence or absence can be useful. They indicate a change in the carcass, and are part of the insect succession.

All four species above are generalized scavengers of decaying animal tissue in the larval stage. The adults seen above really are there to mate and lay eggs. The adults do little if anything to aid decomposition directly.