The scuttle flies (Diptera: Phoridae) are important in forensic dipterology, because of their necrophagous habit. They are amongst the first wave of insects visiting human corpses in mechanically barricaded environments; hence their immature stages are generally used for estimation of PMI. The effect of different substrates commonly used for developmental studies was studied to analyze the vari...

The well-known sex-determining cascade of Drosophila melanogaster serves as a paradigm for the pathway to sexual development in insects. But the primary sex-determining signal and the subsequent step, Sex-lethal (Sxl), have been shown not to be functionally conserved in non-Drosophila flies. We isolated doublesex (dsx), which is a downstream step in the cascade, from the phorid fly Megaselia sc...

The scuttle fly, Megaselia scalaris, is often cited as a model in which to study early sex chromosome evolution because of its homomorphic sex chromosomes, low but measurable molecular differentiation between sex chromosomes, and occasional transposition of the male-determining element to different chromosomes in laboratory cultures. Counterintuitively, natural isolates consistently show sex li...

myiasis is the infestation of organs and tissues of human and animals with fly larvae. this article reports an 18 year-old man with urogenital myiasis, the passing of live megaselia scalaris larvae in the urine, from zanjan city, northwest of iran. we discourse the importance of diagnosis and management of urogenital myiasis in medicine.

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...

Scuttle flies (Diptera: Phoridae) are small-sized insects of forensic importance. They are well known for diversified species and habitats, but in the context of forensic entomology, scuttle flies' inhabitance of corpses remains inadequately explored. With recent reports indicating the existence of more scuttle fly species possibly inhabiting these environments, a decomposition study using anim...

This study compared the number of individuals Musca domestica and Megaselia scalaris caught in multiple vertically placed traps to determine effective placement height for monitoring. The M. decreased significantly as light trap increased. was largest highest when 2 or 3 were operated. There no significant difference at different heights only one turned on, which suggested that both species att...