Wing Morphometrics of Forensic Important Fly Species in Kelantan, Malaysia

Abstract

This research discusses the possibility of determining the species and sex of necrophagous flies by examining their wing morphology. Fresh beef meat (500 g) was placed in both rural and urban areas of Kelantan, Malaysia, and third instar maggots were collected for rearing from the third to the seventh day. Adult flies were killed with chloroform and their species and sexual status were determined using standard procedures. After detaching their wings, the morphology was documented using a Leica MC 170HD digital camera attached to a Leica stereo microscope. Thirteen wing landmarks were chosen for geometric morphometric analysis. Principal Component Analysis (PCA), canonical variate analysis (CVA), centroid size variation, and the unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic averages (UPGMA) were used to analyse the wing morphology of Chyrsomya megacephala (Fabricius, 1794), Chrysomya rufifacies (Macquart, 1843), and Sarcophaga ruficornis (Fabricius, 1794) The results indicate that sex and fly species can be distinguished based on wing morphology, and that CVA is more effective at species differentiation than sex grouping using Malahanobis distances, with a P value of 0.0001. When comparing different species and sexes of the fly, CVA demonstrates distinct clustering. Identification of necrophagous fly wings is a useful alternative tool for fly classification.