Phoridae are small or minute flies easily recognized by their humpbacked appearance. The adults are fairly common in many habitats, but occur especially in decaying animal or vegetable matter. Some occur in fungi and some are internal parasitoids (Veríssimo, 1995; Andreotti et al., 2003) of various other insects. Megaselia scalaris (Loew, 1866) (Diptera: Phoridae) is found in various environmen...

The application of insect and arthropod information to medicolegal death investigations is one of the more exacting applications of entomology. Historically limited to homicide investigations, the integration of full time forensic entomology services to the medical examiner's office in Harris County has opened up the opportunity to apply entomology to a wide variety of manner of death classific...

What is a scuttle fly? The scuttle fly, Megaselia scalaris, is a Dipteran fly in the family Phoridae named for the short, rapid bursts of running motion characteristic of adults. The species is alternatively referred to as the ‘humpbacked fly’ because of its hump-backed appearance (Figure 1), or the ‘coffin fly’ because of its ability to dig deep into the ground to reach buried carrion and pene...