Carrion-associated flies (Diptera) are known mechanical vectors of harmful pathogens that can be transmitted to both humans and other animals. The structure and function of carrion fly communities related to carrion type and size may lend great insight for agricultural forensics, generating predictive models that may help trace pathogen origin and movement and vector dispersal, especially when dealing with mass mortality events. The production (total counts and total masses) and composition (i.e., fly diversity, richness, evenness, and sex ratios) of fly communities produced from different carrion types (bird and rabbit) and sizes (biomasses ranging from 100-6,000 g) across winter and summer of 2023 in central Texas, USA. As expected, increasing carrion size produced more flies; however, production variability also increased significantly (df=5, F ratio= 7.23, p< 0.0001). This outcome indicates models developed to predict fly production from carrion are potentially less accurate as the size of the carrion increases. These effects were species-specific and impacted by species interactions. Lucilia sericata (Meigen) was exclusively produced on larger carrion (e.g., rabbits at 1000 g). Calliphora vicina (Robineau-Desvoidy) and Phormia regina (Meigen) could dominate a single carcass, but never produced nearly as many flies on any particular carcass type as L. sericata did on large mammals. The analysis of species-specific production across different carcass types and biomasses provides a production-to-whole-carcass biomass ratio, which may have implications for a variety of scientific disciplines involving zoonotic research, agricultural forensics, and general decomposition ecology- especially related to mass mortality events as global climates evolve.
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