ABSTRACT
Necrophagous insects relevant to forensics have evolved within a broad community of organisms that are associated with recycling carrion organic matter in nature. The competition among organisms has likely facilitated evolved strategies for each species to efficiently use the resource, retard, or otherwise inhibit the competing species, and mechanisms to disperse from the quickly depleted resource. The entire process of decomposition begins with the “ecological release” of the endogenous microbial species upon host death, setting the initial biotic conditions that affect the pre- and post-colonization intervals of necrophagous insects. Microbial communities affiliated with human hosts undergo topographical and temporal shifts throughout decomposition. Microbial communities associated with the carcasses could be altering the quality of the resource and thus mediating arthropod community assembly. Based on the rapidly growing interest and knowledge of the postmortem microbiome, the feasibility of integrating microbiome analyses with currently used forensic indicators, such as entomological evidence, during investigation is not far-fetched.
