Authors: Senta Niederegger Anton Miroschnikow Roland Spieß
Publish Date: 2012/10/04
Volume: 112, Issue: 1, Pages: 347-355
Abstract
The muscular attachment sites MAS of blowfly larvae can be visualised as “dots” by removing and staining the cuticle Each segment bears several rows of MAS The silhouettes of a subset of those rows in the second third and fourth segments were previously shown to be specific for four species of L3 blowfly larvae In this investigation the MAS patterns are described for a fifth species Protophormia terraenovae and throughout larval development of Calliphora vicina and Calliphora vomitoria The patterns of P terraenovae show considerable differences to those of the Calliphora species larger MAS characteristic “M” shape in row 4A thus providing further evidence for the viability of the method as tool for species determination Larvae with a body length of only 3 mm already show a complete set of MAS expressing identical pattern characteristics as L3 larvae with maximal body length These characteristics are largely unchanged throughout development Plotting the row length as a function of the body length throughout development reveals a linear correlation Therefore in case of requirement eg fragmentation not only the species but also the approximate larval age can be calculated with this method
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