Does Carcass Enrichment Alter Community Structure of Predaceous and Parasitic Arthropods?: A Second Test of the Anthropology Research Facility in Knoxville, Tennessee

• NCJ Number: 208577
• Journal: Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 50 Issue: 1 Dated: January 2005 Pages: 134-142
• Author(s): Kenneth G. Schoenly Ph.D.; S. Adam Shahid M.S.; Neal H. Haskell Ph.D.; Robert D. Hall Ph.D.
• Date Published: January 2005
• Length: 9 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

In a second test of an arthropod saturation hypothesis, this study examined whether the on-campus Anthropology Research Facility (ARF) at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville), with over 20 years of carcass enrichment, is comparable to nonenriched sites in the community structure of predatory and parasitic arthropods that prey upon the sarcosaprophagous fauna.

Abstract

For some 20 years ARF has studied over 400 sets of human remains and comparative field experiments with pigs as model corpses. Scientific outputs from this site have included insect fauna surveys. Ecological studies have shown, however, that nutrient-enriched ecosystems, such as ARF, may become dominated by the most tolerant or competitive species, thus altering both species richness and evenness of the biological community. Consequently, it may be possible that carcass enrichment at ARF might saturate human and other animal remains with arthropods of reduced diversity but high abundance (herein called the arthropod saturation hypothesis). Over a 12-day period in June 1998, the current study used pitfall traps and sweep nets to collect 10,065 predaceous, parasitic, and hematophagous (blood-feeding) arthropods from freshly euthanized pigs placed at ARF and at 3 surrounding sites various distances from ARF (S2-S4). The community structure of these organisms was comparable in most paired-site tests regarding species composition, colonization rates, and evenness of pitfall-trap abundance per carcass. Site differences were found in rarefaction tests of both sweep-net and pitfall-trap taxa and in tests of taxonomic evenness and ranked volumes of sweep-net samples. Despite these differences, however, there was no evidence that the predatory/parasitic fauna at ARF had fewer but larger populations as a result of carcass enrichment. Data analysis led researchers to conclude that ARF is more representative of surrounding sites regarding the sarcosaprovore component than to the predatory/parasitic component within the larger carrion-arthropod community. 2 tables, 4 figures, and 42 references