Larval-mass effect: Characterisation of heat emission by necrophageous blowflies (Diptera: Calliphoridae) larval aggregates

Abstract

Numerous Calliphoridae species larvae are necrophageous and develop on animal cadavers. During the feeding stages, a strong gregarious behaviour leads to the formation of large larval masses, allowing larvae to share digestive fluids. Furthermore, a mass of larvae emits heat, resulting in a local increase of temperature. Differences greater than 20°C between ambient and larval mass temperatures have already been observed, and the temperature of the mass can reach 50°C. Thus, larvae could benefit from this increased local temperature to speed up their development. This study focuses on the dynamic and characterisation of heat emission by Lucilia sericata (Diptera: Calliphoridae) (Meigen, 1826) larval masses. Experiments were performed under controlled conditions using several ambient temperatures and different numbers of larvae. Results indicate that heat emission depends on the instar and is strongly affected by available amount of food. Furthermore, according to the experimental data, the heat emission is also relative to the weight of the larval mass, the larvae number and the local temperature. These results also demonstrate that optimum ambient-temperature values ranging between 22°C and 25°C produce maximal heat-emission per larva. Furthermore, a feedback loop, involving heat exchanges and physiological and behavioural thermoregulation processes, appears inside aggregates. In the context of forensic cases and post-mortem interval (PMI) estimation, these results indicate that heat emission can occur even with "small" masses if they are composed of high number of second stage larvae. Furthermore, particular attention should be paid on cases involving L. sericata larvae at ambient temperature ranging from 22°C to 25°C, which appears to maximise the heat-emission process.