During the summer term of 2019, I was part of a
Summer Team Impact Project through OSCAR that researched the connection between
ecology and forensic entomology. Being a forensic science major, this project interested
me because of how different environmental factors, such as weather or carcass size, can affect the calculation
of the post-mortem interval(PMI). In forensic science, the PMI is used to report to
investigators the time of death (TOD) of the victim. This project specifically investigated how different cadaver
sizes affected the carcass in a number of aspects, from phase succession to carrion community composition. This practice allowed me to develop a strong understanding of how a
forensic entomologist is a vital component to any criminal investigation. This
relates to my long-term goals of wanting to be employed by a state or federal level forensic science lab, not only
through what I learned specific to this project, but I was able to gain the
knowledge of what it takes to work in a research lab.
For this project, my team’s day-to-day work consisted of categorizing and counting samples of carrion insects that we collected from
a week of field research. Our lab processed over 300 samples, each consisting of hundreds, if
not thousands, of carrion insects, many of which we took down to the species level. Through this data, I learned how many different aspects of PMI calculation can be affected by aspects of carcass size. This project as a whole also allowed me to discover how many different questions can be developed and investigated from one research project.
