title: A preliminary survey of carrion breeding insects associated with the Eid ul Azha festival in remote Pakistan.
abstract: In Pakistan, the three days of Islamic festival of Eid ul Azha (Eid) are characterized by millions of livestock sacrifices and availability of countless breeding resources for insects of forensic importance. Thus during Eid, December, 2008, in a Pakistani village observing 70 sacrifices, we examined postmortem insect attractions on various sacrificial products (from 23 animals), i.e., blood pools, meat, hides/skins, bones, offal and real time insect succession on goats' offal at five dump sites. Thirty five insect species were collected from 14 indoor and outdoor sites. Offal at the dump sites attracted most insect species both by taxa and in numbers, followed by hides in the court yards, meat (40-70 kg/animal) in kitchens and blood pools in the court yards. Synanthropic calliphorids and muscids were found to be exclusive indoor "first and only arrivals" in comparison to a diverse array of first day insect arrivals at dump sites including calliphorids, sarcophagids, muscids, sphaerocerids, sepsids, empidids, gryllids and formicids. Though burial is usually considered as a barricade between most insect species and carrion yet dump site A with an early burial but also earliest insect colonization showed the fastest rate of decomposition. No vertebrate scavenging at any of the offal dump sites perhaps showed their private feeding inclination, thus implying that in times of mass slaughters most of the dumped winter carrion products in human vicinities are either consumed by insects and/or are buried. Here we also suggest a high rate of fly dispersal during Eid which if true has consequences for forensic investigations in Muslim populace areas especially during the Eid.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Farrah
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zaidi
authors.forename: Xue-xin
authors.initials: XX
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004175:Diptera; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D006041:Goats; D006927:Hymenoptera; D007814:Larva; D010154:Pakistan; D011180:Postmortem Changes