ABSTRACT
Forensic entomology-the use of insects in criminal or medicolegal cases (related to death scene investigations) and civil investigations (urban and stored-product cases related to termite infestations and commercial food contamination)—has been portrayed to the general public in the mass media to be a relatively new eld among the variety of subdisciplines within forensic science. However, it is perhaps one of the oldest in terms of applications in death scene investigations. Earliest records of the use of insects in medicolegal investigations date back to thirteenthcentury China (McKnight 1981), to mid-nineteenth century Europe in two landmark publications by Bergeret (1855) and Mégnin (1894), and to the end of the nineteenth century in Canada (Johnston and Villeneuve 1897). Outside of published scientic research, the application of forensic entomology in the United States did not enter the courtroom until the 1970s and 1980s (Catts and Haskell 1990). The science began to grow signicantly outside of empirical research since the 1980s when police became more aware of the use of this evidence via trainings, workshops, and conferences, and began to request entomologists to testify as expert witnesses (Solomon and Hackett 1996; Anderson 2005).
