Invertebrate Modification of Bone

Abstract

Insects are of interest to forensic scientists, because they enable them to reconstruct length of body exposure, a subsequent sequence of decomposition events, and local environment. Relatively little attention has been paid to insects and other invertebrates as agents of bone modification. In order to rectify this, we conducted mostly laboratory experiments with 12 different invertebrate taxa (termites, hide and darkling beetles, and their larvae, ants, flies, crickets, millipedes, pill millipedes, woodlice, and snails), exposing them to dry and fresh medium-size mammal bone flakes and chicken femora. This chapter's goal is to describe and illustrate the alterations observed, and where possible, to differentiate between the types of damage caused by each taxon. After a few months, the bone flakes were retrieved and microscopically analyzed. Except for woodlice, all the taxa made individual striations and pitted the bone surfaces. Multiple parallel striations were common to all taxa, as was etching and surface removal of bone. In all of the experiments the invertebrates modified dry bone as often as they did fresh bone with tissue attached. In this regard, trogid beetles, for example, which normally visit carcasses in late stages of decomposition, are thus not necessarily good indicators of the postmortem interval.

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