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hello

In order to evaluate the moment of death of domestic animals (I am a vet), I am looking for these informations :

- how to recognise the different stages (L1, L2, L3) of dipterian larvae ?
- how to recognise the species from the larvae ?
- what are the duration of each stage of the cycle (at different temperatures) ?

The species I am interested in are :
C. Vicinia and vomitora
L. sericata, caesar and illustris
C. albiceps
P. regina
P. terranovae

For human forensic entomology, the method consists in growing the larvae until they they become adults to determinate the species and the date of egg laying. About this method I found very precise data on the web.

I don't need the same precision, and I would like to simplify the method : just determinate the species and the stage, to evaluate approximatively the moment of egg laying.

If you have datas about it, I am very interested !

thank you

Guillaume De Priester, France

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Contact Andy Chick (look him up in de members list). He's also into pre-imaginal stages of Calliphoridae...

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Thank you very much, I sent him a message

Another little question : do you know if there is on the web a determination key for adult Calliphoridae

thanks

Guillaume

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Some old data from Kamal, 1958

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If you invest in a copy of "Blowflies" by Erzinclioglu, in the Naturalists' Handbooks series (number 23), all you'll ever need is in there.

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Hi,

I'd recommend contacting people from EAFE - European Association for Forensic Entomology. There are members from France, you can find their contacts here:

http://www.eafe.org/eafe_members1.htm#France

As larvae development differs depending on local conditions, acquiring data from your locality would be the best thing.

NHM in London have launched a key for identifying myiasis causing larvae. Although you are more interested in forensic species, this key could also be of some use:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/myiasis-larvae/index.html

Andrius

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Hello, just stumbled across this, sorry i didnt get your message,
Karmel is the standard for working out Acumulated degree hours/days(ADD), currently theres no way of sperating the Lucilia further than genus, and all maggots have to be in the third instar to be identifiable,
for the method of working out ADD Gennard (2007) or Byrd and Castner (2001) are the the best refs i can recomend,

HTH

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I can help you a little with 2 species.
Lucilia sericata 18-20 0 C . Egg - 24 hours, larva 4-6- days, pupa 7 days.
Protophormia terranovae about the same.
These cases were not for animals but for man corpses. Possibly it may add you some data. Please note that Lucilia may leg eggs on dying (not dead animal). Some calliphorids lay eggs in animal wounds.

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I´ve just noticed this thread - so, I can add some information. Forensic Entomology works with so called "lover development threshold", "sum of effective temperatures to develop from egg to puparium" and "heat constant of species = sum of effective temperatures to develop from egg to adult". So, if you know these rates (numbers) you can keep count of time (days).

Call.vicina: LDT 2 °C, SET to pupa 191, SET to adult 388;
Call.vomitoria: LDT 3, SET to pupa 213, SET to adult 472;
Luc.sericata: LDT 9, SET to pupa ?, SET to adult 207;
Chrys.albiceps: LDT 10.2, SET to pupa 123, SET to adult 186;
Phorm.regina: LDT 11.4, SET to pupa 101, SET to adult 148;
Musc.stabulans: LDT 7.2, SET to pupa 139, SET to adult 269;

And now - how does it work? Simply ;)
The forensic entomologists take samples of alive larvae (maggots) from a body and "breed" them on piece of meat (in using constant temperature, usually 20-24 °C) until pupation or more precisely until adults. It is less difficult to determine adults to species ;)
Then you know spesies and "rates" of the species and you can count off average day temperature all days before hatching of adults (or pupation).

Hana