Climate change and forensic entomology

Abstract

We believe it is necessary to have a substantial section on climatology with the intent of providing a comprehensive picture that can be useful for the entomologist to explain the discovery of species or to observe communities that differ from those classically described. The most recent theories explaining the rise in global temperature, the consequences for flora and fauna, and the predictions concerning the climatic state in the forthcoming years should, in our view, become part of the knowledge of each forensic entomologist, who is often the first to pick up on and to indicate alien species or species that are changing their distributional areas, or phenology. Forensic entomologists, doctors, and veterinarians have more opportunities for chance encounters with species that are not included in the local checklists because the corpses and animal remains serve as substantial bait, attracting and concentrating in small areas rare species that previously had been scattered throughout the environment. Many explanations of discoveries, along with the apparent incoherence in the series of surges proposed in the classic table of the colonization of corpses, can be justified in the light of environmental variations induced by actual climatic changes, which are occurring with incredible velocity.