Potential bacterial biomarkers for insect colonization in forensic cases: preliminary quantitative data on...

For the last decades, forensic microbiology became an emerging complementary tool in criminalistics. Although the insect-microbe interactions regarding pathogen transmission were extensively studied, only scarce information is available on bacterial transfer from necrophagous insects to host tissues. Our data provides the first report on the occurrence of Wohlfahrtiimonas chitiniclastica and Ignatzschineria indica in Lucilia illustris Meigen, 1826 (Diptera: Calliphoridae), and the quantitative dynamics of the two bacterial species along the insect life-stages and transfer to beef and pork host tissues using qPCR gyrase b specific primers. The content of both bacterial species increased along the insect life stages. W. chitiniclastica was detected in all developmental stages independent of the feeding substrate. I. indica was measurable with 10² gene copies ng^-1 DNA threshold starting from the third instar larvae when feeding on beef, and from the egg stage with a 10²× higher representation when using the pork substrate. The transfer of bacterial species to both tissues occurred after 3 colonization days except for I. indica that was visible in beef liver only during day 5. Considering the utilization of pork tissues as human analogues, these quantitative microbial dynamics data provides first insect-specific bacterial candidates as potential colonization biomarkers in forensic investigations.