ARTHROPOD FAUNA ASSOCIATED WITH DECOMPOSING GUINEA PIG (CAVIA PORCELLUS) CARRION AT THE COLLEGE OF EDUCATION WARRI, WARRI SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, DELTA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

A wet season survey of the arthropods collected on the decomposing Guinea pig carrions at the College of Education, Warri was carried out to create baseline arthropods information on the Guinea pigs’ carrions. Six Guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) were killed through cervical dislocation and monitored for 40 days, from April 2nd to May 11th 2019 with daily observation and collection of invading arthropods. Insects were collected with sweep nets, brushes, handpicking and pitfall traps, while the soil under the carrions were scanned for hidden insects’ stages. The result obtained revealed five identifiable stages of decay: fresh, bloated, active decay, advance decay and dry decay respectively. Despite the fact that there was just a single decomposition process, 288 arthropods were recorded during the study; 168, Dipterans; 57, Hymenoptera; 60, Coleoptera and 3 belonged to orders. Thirty of
these arthropods were recorded at fresh stage; 63, bloat; 67, active decay; and 76, advanced decay stage. Only 51 were recorded at the dry decay stage, belonging to nine families. Most of the arthropod groups from the orders of Diptera and Coleoptera were forensically significant. The fact that they used the decaying guinea pig carrions for either breeding and/or oviposition resulted in producing their young ones. This could be used in the predicting, estimating and calculation of the time of death (post
mortem interval) of the organism Hymenoptera, especially the family of Formicidae may be of great forensic importance as their activities caused tear and wear; thus creating artificial openings on the carrions as observed during the study. This could be a source of great errors in the estimation of the Post mortem interval, while Lepidoptera and some other Hymenoptera were just incidental and used the carrion as safe resting venue. However, this suggests that more researches should be carried out at
the College of Education and its environments during different seasons, using different animal models to create comprehensive insects of forensic important database at the oil rich city