TY  - JOUR
A1  - Narin Sontigun, 
A1  - Kabkaew L. Sukontason, 
A1  - Zajac, Barbara Karolina
A1  - Zehner, Richard
A1  - Kom Sukontason, 
A1  - Anchalee Wannasan, 
A1  - Amendt, Jens
T1  - Wing morphometrics as a tool in species identification of forensically important blow flies of Thailand
T2  - Parasites & vectors
N2  - Background: Correct species identification of blow flies is a crucial step for understanding their biology, which can be used not only for designing fly control programs, but also to determine the minimum time since death. Identification techniques are usually based on morphological and molecular characters. However, the use of classical morphology requires experienced entomologists for correct identification; while molecular techniques rely on a sound laboratory expertise and remain ambiguous for certain taxa. Landmark-based geometric morphometric analysis of insect wings has been extensively applied in species identification. However, few wing morphometric analyses of blow fly species have been published.
Methods: We applied a landmark-based geometric morphometric analysis of wings for species identification of 12 medically and forensically important blow fly species of Thailand. Nineteen landmarks of each right wing of 372 specimens were digitised. Variation in wing size and wing shape was analysed and evaluated for allometric effects. The latter confirmed the influence of size on the shape differences between species and sexes. Wing shape variation among genera and species were analysed using canonical variates analysis followed by a cross-validation test.
Results: Wing size was not suitable for species discrimination, whereas wing shape can be a useful tool to separate taxa on both, genus and species level depending on the analysed taxa. It appeared to be highly reliable, especially for classifying Chrysomya species, but less robust for a species discrimination in the genera Lucilia and Hemipyrellia. Allometry did not affect species separation but had an impact on sexual shape dimorphism.
Conclusions: A landmark-based geometric morphometric analysis of wings is a useful additional method for species discrimination. It is a simple, reliable and inexpensive method, but it can be time-consuming locating the landmarks for a large scale study and requires non-damaged wings for analysis.
KW  - Species identification
KW  - Forensic entomology
KW  - Wing morphometry
KW  - Blow fly
KW  - Thailand
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/45657
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-456577
SN  - 1756-3305
N1  - © The Author(s). 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated
VL  - 10
IS  - 1, Art. 229
SP  - 1
EP  - 14
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -