Aspectos da biologia larval de Chrysomya megacephala (F.) (Diptera : calliphoridae): curva de crescimento e período de mais rápido desenvolvimento larval

Pós-graduação em Ciências Biológicas (Zoologia) - IBRC

Dinâmica e modelagem ecológica de dípteros de importância forense

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Dinâmica de interações intra e interespecíficas em moscas-varejeiras sob a ação de psicofármacos: aplicações ecológicas no contexto forense

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Dinâmica tritrófica experimental em populações de moscas varejeiras

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Processos auto-organizados em agregados de larvas de moscas-varejeiras em dispersão pós-alimentar: experimentação, modelagem e validação

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Aspectos demográficos de Chrysomya albiceps (W.) (Diptera: Calliphoridae): análise de sensibilidade dos fatores de mortalidade no estágio imaturo e parâmetros demográficos de adultos

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Comportamento de oviposição em Chrysomya megacephala (F.) (Diptera: Calliphoridae): distinção quantitativa frente a posturas prévias?

Chrysomya megacephala (Fabricius), has considerable medical, veterinary and forensic importance. In insects in general, the ability to track the food substrate is due to highly sensitive organs adapted for detecting odors, particularly in the case of blowflies, which is one of carcass main consumers. Eggs of blowflies are usually aggregated in function of the behavior of other pheromone mediated by females laying eggs in place on the same substrate. One of the main reasons for studying oviposition behavior is because it may indirectly affect individual qualification, population dynamics and community structure. It has been suggested that female blowflies can evaluate the number of eggs on a substrate, decreasing the size of oviposition in very saturated substrates with larvae or eggs leading to a lower intraspecific competition. The present study investigated the oviposition behavior of females of C. megacephala, and wished to consider whether they are able to distinguish quantitatively (size of the mass) eggs previously put into a place of posture and hence indicate whether there is a limit beneficial (to avoid competition among larvae) for its oviposition on the same substrate or if that place would already be saturated, requiring find another substrate without eggs or less for futures ovipositions. With 20 females and five males, five treatments were applied, repeated ten times and analyzed using the Mann-Whitney test. Each treatment consists in placing, inside the cage, a flask with 50g of ground beef and another one in the other side, with the same amount of substrate with a certain amount of prior oviposition for a period of 5 hours. The masses prior eggs were used 0.03 g, 0.05 g, 0.1 g, 0.2 g and 0.3 g (respectively, T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5). The other part of the work consisted in the use of a “Y” olfactometer, a device used to determine the choice of an invertebrate against... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

Theoretical approaches to forensic entomology: I. Mathematical model of postfeeding larval dispersal

An overall theoretical approach to model phenomena of interest for forensic entomology is advanced. Efforts are concentrated in identifying biological attributes at the individual, population and community of the arthropod fauna associated with decomposing human corpses and then incorporating these attributes into mathematical models. In particular in this paper a diffusion model of dispersal of post feeding larvae is described for blowflies, which are the most common insects associated with corpses.

Resposta olfativa de fêmeas de Chrysomya Megacephala (F.) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) frente a posturas prévias e caracterização química dos compostos apolares da superfície de seus ovos

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

The use of artificial neural networks in analysing the nutritional ecology of Chrysomya megacephala (F.) (Diptera: Calliphoridae), compared with a statistical model

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been widely applied to the resolution of complex biological problems. An important feature of neural models is that their implementation is not precluded by the theoretical distribution shape of the data used. Frequently, the performance of ANNs over linear or non-linear regression-based statistical methods is deemed to be significantly superior if suitable sample sizes are provided, especially in multidimensional and non-linear processes. The current work was aimed at utilising three well-known neural network methods in order to evaluate whether these models would be able to provide more accurate outcomes in relation to a conventional regression method in pupal weight predictions of Chrysomya megacephala, a species of blowfly (Diptera: Calliphoridae), using larval density (i.e. the initial number of larvae), amount of available food and pupal size as input data. It was possible to notice that the neural networks yielded more accurate performances in comparison with the statistical model (multiple regression). Assessing the three types of networks utilised (Multi-layer Perceptron, Radial Basis Function and Generalised Regression Neural Network), no considerable differences between these models were detected. The superiority of these neural models over a classical statistical method represents an important fact, because more accurate models may clarify several intricate aspects concerning the nutritional ecology of blowflies.