My research this summer aims
to understand the effects of different parameters on the insect succession on
carrion communities. I became interested in this summer team project because
this was a topic that I didn’t know much about and wanted to learn about first-hand.
The appeal of enhancing my skills in both the field and laboratory was another factor,
as well as the chance to have creative contribution to a scientific experiment.
I was interested in the effect of burning carrion and how that would affect the
succession patterns of insects in the community and the rate of decomposition.
This project has both ecological and forensic components. My long-term career
goal is to perform CSI and forensic work on criminal cases that involve
wildlife including illegal pet trade cases, illegal animal parts trade, and other
cases that involve endangered species. This project provided me with insight
into the world of forensic entomology and it’s been beneficial to gain a
personal understanding of how forensic entomologists contribute to solving
criminal cases.
The study started with
fieldwork where our team placed 60 rat carcasses in a field and collected
samples of insects on the decomposing carcass for 10 days. Since then, we have
been identifying and recording insect species in the laboratory. We are in the
process of performing statistics on the data to understand the relationship
between our parameters and the insect succession patterns.
I learned through my research
that burning a carcass increases the rate of decomposition and also increases the
rate that insects are attracted to a carcass. I also learned that there are
hundreds of species of flies and that all are important to the understanding of
succession patterns of carrion communities. I am grateful to have the opportunity
to understand analyses performed in the professional field, to contribute to
the ecological and forensic science research communities, and to contribute to
the scientific research community at George Mason University.
