Forensic entomology in Cameroon (central africa sub-region) : the use of arthropodofauna of rats (Rattus norvegicus, Berkenhout, 1769, var wistar) carcasses as silent crime scene witnesses.

FEUGANG YOUMESSI Francis Dupont ^*

• University of Yaounde I, Yaounde, Cameroon

Forensic entomology in Cameroon (central africa sub-region) : the use of arthropodofauna of rats (Rattus norvegicus, Berkenhout, 1769, var wistar) carcasses as silent crime scene witnesses.In order to solve crime during a legal procedure worldwide, the presentation of palpable proof at court is the main key tools. The contribution of necrophagous insect for this issue is increasing nowaday since these invertebrate seems to be one of the major modern methods for the renforcement of judiciary system. This scientific discipline known as forensic entomology is a field of criminalistics/criminology that aims to use results gathered from the study of insects collected at a crime scene in order to solve crimes involving wildlife or other animals/human. In court, questions as the estimation of the death date, the cause of death, the movement of corpse after death, the abandonment of elderly…..are recurrent during the criminal investigation.In order to gather data that can be exploited to answer the above questions, we have conduct from 18 th March to 12 th June 2023 an experiment Rattus norvegicus, Berkenhout, 1769, var wistar carcasses within the University of Yaounde 1 campus. There were exposed on an open air environment inside wooden cage for protection into the bush behind the amphitheater 502 of the Faculty of Science of the University of Yaounde 1. The aim of this research work is to census necrophagous arthropodfauna that can be exploited as anodin witnesses always at the crime scene to determine the date of death, the caause of death and the movment of the carcass after the crime.A total of 2345 arthropodofauna belonging to 3 classes (arachnida, myriapoda and hexapoda), 16 orders (acaria, araneida, chilopoda, diplopoda, diptera, coleoptera, lepidoptera, dermaptera, hemiptera, hymenoptera, dictyoptera, collembola, homoptera, orthoptera, psocoptera and thysanoura) and 37 families, 14 genera and 27 species were census. This cadaveric fauna named « silent crime scene witnesses » were constituted of many trophic guilds such as predators, necrophagous and omnivorous with 541, 1289 and 294 insects respectively. The above leading guilds were secondarily followed by saprophagous, opportunistic, parasitoïd, hematophagous and incidental hosted 122, 85, 8, 3 and 2 individual successively.