ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Insect Sci.
Sec. Insect Physiology
Temperature-Dependent Developmental modeling of Protophormia terraenovae (Diptera: Calliphoridae) and its application in PMI inference
Provisionally accepted
- Xinjiang Medical University, Ürümqi, China
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Protophormia terraenovae is a forensically important blow fly species in cold regions. This study investigated its development at constant temperatures (15-25℃). Results showed that developmental duration significantly decreased with increasing temperature, with the total period ranging from 779.33 hours at 15°C to 396.67 hours at 25°C. The hatching and third-instar larval stages were most temperature-sensitive. We established Isomorphen and Isomegalen models, which visually illustrated the prolongation of development progress and the increased time required for larval growth per millimeter as temperature decreased. Thermal summation models indicated a strong linear relationship for the hatching and third-instar stages. Furthermore, we found that pupal weight was a more reliable growth indicators than length or width. This study provides fundamental developmental data and models for improving the accuracy of postmortem interval estimation using P. terraenovae in forensic practice.
Keywords: Developmental models5, entomology1, forensic, insect2, Necrophagous, Postmortem interva4, Protophormia, terraenovae3
Received: 24 Dec 2025; Accepted: 23 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Guo, Niu, Wang, Li, Zhang, Gu, Cai and Meng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jifeng Cai
Fanming Meng
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