Succession of Arthropods on White Rat Carcasses in Ile Ife, Southwestern Nigeria

The forensic information provided by decomposition of small carcasses often goes unnoticed, even in advanced economies, due to frequent neglect. This paper reports the succession pattern of arthropod species that associated with carcasses of white rat, Rattus norvegicus Berkenhout Rodentia Muridae , in Ile Ife, southwestern Nigeria. Four bushy sites were chosen for the study and nine rat carcasses were placed at each site once a season for two seasons. The carcasses were monitored daily until the process of decay was over. The visiting and colonizing invertebrates were collected daily and identified. Immatures were also collected and reared in the laboratory till adult emergence for easy identification. The carcasses went through five stages of decay and the arthropods arrived in the order Diptera early fresh stage , Hymenoptera late fresh stage , Coleoptera and Dermaptera active decay stage , and Araneae and Oribatida advanced decay stage . Dipteran flies were the first arthropods to interact with the remains but ants were the only arthropods that associated with all the five stages of decay. A total of 9828 arthropods 4415 adults and 5413 immatures belonging to six orders in two classes of the phylum were collected in the study. The proportion of faunal abundance was Diptera 75.10 , Hymenoptera 22.90 , Coleoptera 1.80 , Dermaptera 0.10 , Oribatida 0.08 and Araneae 0.02 . Rate of decay was faster and faunal population was higher on carcasses during the dry season compared to the wet. Faunal population was also higher on carcasses placed in close proximity to the Zoological garden. The implications of these results on accuracy of estimated postmortem interval PMI and applicability in law were discussed. Aminat Adeola Adesina | Olalekan Joseph Soyelu "Succession of Arthropods on White Rat Carcasses in Ile-Ife, Southwestern Nigeria" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-4 | Issue-6 , October 2020, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd35737.pdf Paper Url: https://www.ijtsrd.com/biological-science/zoology/35737/succession-of-arthropods-on-white-rat-carcasses-in-ileife-southwestern-nigeria/aminat-adeola-adesina