Species identification of Middle Eastern blowflies (Diptera: Calliphoridae) of forensic importance.

Kamran Akbarzadeh,Hana Sulakova,Krzysztof Szpila,James F Wallman

doi:10.1007/s00436-015-4329-y

Abstract

The lack of reliable tools for species identification of necrophagous blowflies of the Middle East is a serious obstacle to the development of forensic entomology in the majority of countries of this region. Adding to the complexity of diagnosing the regional fauna is that species representing three different zoogeographical elements exist in sympatry. In response to this situation, a high-quality key to the adults of all species of forensically relevant blowflies of the Middle East has been prepared. Thanks to the modern technique of image-stack stereomicroscopy and high-quality entomological materials, this new key can be easily applied by investigators inexperienced in the taxonomy of blowflies. The major technical problems relating to the species identification of necrophagous blowflies of the Middle East are also discussed.

Highlights

Necrophagous blowflies are among the most ubiquitous insects occurring in anthropogenic ecosystems
The Middle East is defined as the group of the following countries situated in south-east Asia and northern Africa: Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Qatar, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and Turkey (Kort 2008)
The relevant species of blowflies of forensic importance known from the Middle East, and their distributions, were determined using the catalogs of Schumann (1986) and Verves (2005), with the addition of the following publications: Büttiker et al (1979), Deeming (1996, 2007), Parchami-Araghi et al (2001), Kurahashi and Afzal (2002), Rognes (2002), Al-Mesbah (2010), Sabanoğlu and Sert (2010), Tüzün et al (2010), Abouzied (2014) and Verves and Khrokalo (2014)

Summary

Introduction

Necrophagous blowflies are among the most ubiquitous insects occurring in anthropogenic ecosystems. They have great medical importance, which relates to their participation in carrion decomposition, facultative parasitism of vertebrate tissues, and mechanical transmission of various pathogenic microorganisms (Norris 1965; Greenberg 1973; Hall and Wall 1995). The blowflies (family Calliphoridae) in their traditional, broad form are a paraphyletic taxon. This was postulated by Rognes (1997) and has been confirmed by recent molecular studies (e.g., Kutty et al 2010; Marinho et al 2012; Nelson et al 2012; Singh and Wells 2013). The blowfly fauna of some large geographical regions, like the Afrotropics (except Namibia and the Republic of South Africa) and the Parasitol Res (2015) 114:1463–1472

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