Thermal summation model and instar determination of all developmental stages of necrophagous beetle, Sciodrepoides watsoni (Spence) (Coleoptera: Leiodidae: Cholevinae)
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Developmental Biology, Ecology, Entomology
- Keywords
- Coleoptera, forensic entomology, developmental biology, thermal summation model, Cholevinae, Leiodidae, instar determination
- Copyright
- © 2015 Jakubec
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- (2015) Thermal summation model and instar determination of all developmental stages of necrophagous beetle, Sciodrepoides watsoni (Spence) (Coleoptera: Leiodidae: Cholevinae) PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1343v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1343v1
Abstract
Necrophagous beetles are underrepresented in forensic entomology studies despite their undeniable utility for the field. In our article we would like to address this problem and provide information regarding developmental biology and instar determination of Sciodrepoides watsoni (Spence, 1813), which is very common species occurring across the Holarctic region. We collected adult specimens from several localities across the Czech Republic to establish a laboratory culture with constant temperature regime and long day photoperiod. These adults were divided between five treatments that differed only in temperature (15, 18, 21, 25 and 28°C). Emerging larvae were separated and their individual development was photographically documented every day until adulthood. Parameters of thermal summation models and their standard errors were calculated for each developmental stage. We also propose head width as a new character for larval instar determination together with a new methodology for future studies of size based characters.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.