Foraging by food deprived larvae of Neobellieria bullata (Diptera: Sarcophagidae).
Traditional entomological methods of estimating postmortem interval from developmental stages of fly larvae associated with the body are based on the premise that older larvae are not recruited from the surrounding environment. We found that food deprived second and third instar larvae of the fleshfly, Neobellieria bullata Parker, can locate beef liver over a distance of 33 cm, apparently by using chemical cues, and can crawl to the food within 90 min. The implications of these results are discussed with respect to methods of estimating postmortem interval by calculating rates of fly larvae development.