Building a dermestid colony at the Natural History Collection of the Federal University of Piauí (CHNUFPI)

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Considering the need to speed up processes to increase the osteological collection of the Natural History Collection of the Federal University of Piauí (CHNUFPI), we decided to build the first colony of Dermestes sp. and to draw up a basic protocol so that other collections can succeed in building and maintaining their own colonies. In 320 days, 19 carcasses of non-flying small mammals (Rodentia and Didelphimorphia), were completely cleaned and deposited in the CHNUFPI osteological collection. The colony proved to be efficient for cleaning small mammal carcasses, suggesting the same procedure could be applied to other similar size vertebrates.