In January 2011, a corpse in an advanced state of establishment was found on the shore of the Canales reservoir (Granada).
He had a generalized green spot, well-defined vascular network, areas of onset of adipocere, maceration of skin and beans and entomofauna sarcosaprófaga.
Due to the fact that the patient sought care, positive identification based on facial scratches was impossible, but according to the interviewees, this was a man who had disappeared from his home at the end of November of the previous year.
The temperature at the site of the survey was 5oC.
1.
The spot of the rising consisted of a corner of ground rising above the marsh of Canales.
The floor had sandy texture with some shrub formations of little frondness.
Mucilage-like remains were described from what could be algae that were deposited at the bottom of the reservoir filling levels.
Due to the difficulty of access to the location where the corpse was located, they had to intervene effective civil protection for the body in a hammock to a safe place where appropriate actions were continued.
The case presented here is due to the suspicion of immersion of the body prior to colonization by Diptera primary insects of forensic interest, and therefore a considerable delay between death and arrival of these insects.
From the meteorological data and the knowledge of the temporal sequence in the larval development of a diptera species, it was possible to determine the minimum interval between the finding on the human remains and the water passing through.
The body was attached to the Institute of Legal Medicine of Granada, where autopsy was performed according to European regulations
The collection of entomological evidence during the practice of autopsy and its interpretation at all stages of the research was carried out following the recommendations of the European Association for Forensic Entomology (EAFE)13.
The samples were photographed with a metric control and collected from the region of cefadime by the forensic doctor responsible for the autopsy, were stored at a temperature of 18oC and were transported in an isothermal container.
Twelve live larvae were reared until adulthood in Hera.eus B-12, at a temperature of 25oC, relative humidity of 80% and fed with pig liver ad libitum to perform identification of larvae.
The rest were sacrificed by immersion in ambulance water for 1 minute and then preserved in 70% alcohol for larval identification.
Nine adults emerged from the larvae reared.
Two larvae that remitted dead were subjected to clearance in a 10% w/v sodium hydroxide challenge for 24 hours.
Subsequently, they were mounted in a microscopic preparation with DPX (VWR International®) to observe in greater detail the morphoanatomical characteristics.
Of the adults, the dead was directly preserved in 70% alcohol and the other sacrificed with ethyl acetate and later preserved with the same method as the sample that was sent dead.
All samples were identified at species level14,15.
No entomological samples were collected during the lifting of the cadaver.
Environmental data
Meteorological data (in the present work, we take the daily temperatures due to lack of availability of vacancies) were taken from the agro-ecological stations located at the Institute of Research with the aim of evaluating the temperature.
Season 443423.0 Y=4114357.0, height above sea level: 630 k6.022
In order to carry out the evaluation of this temperature adjustment, a data logger was placed February maximum (site /INT-ESCORT) in close proximity to the location of the finding of the organism due to the impossibility of concrete access.
The results were analyzed with the statistical package SPSS 15.0 and supplemented with UNStat, application developed by the University of Navarra.
1.
In order to differentiate between larvae that are still feeding on the body under observation and those that are already moving away from the feeding source to pupate, the larvae are dorsally dissected and a sublethal fat deposit is checked.
This deposit is observable in migratory larvae3.
Moreover, measuring the length of the filled digestive tract allows us to discern between both phases18.
While larvae feed together, the contents increase their filling length while, when they enter the migratory phase, there is a gastrointestinal discomfort involving digestive tract filling in the digestive tract.
