I am an entomologist so I study insects.

And I specialize currently in

the insects of East Texas.
In my particular eco region which
is the Pining Woods eco region.
And my research right now focuses
on an area of forensic entomology.
So forensic entomology is
the use of insects to help us to
estimate a period of time.
And forensic entomology, deals with
a lot of different scenarios but
I think the one that's most famous
is the use of insects in, areas or,
or situations of, questionable deaths.
So what we do is we use information
provided about, provided by the insects.
To work backwards through
time to estimate,
how long the insects have colonized
the cadaver, and that period usually
correlates to the time since death, or it
can correlate to that period very closely.
So some of the clues that we use, for
example would be age of the maggot.
A maggot is the larval stage of flies.
And, there are several
species of flies and,
several families that are obligate
feeders of decomposing fresh.
And, the adults can come and
go from the cadaver, but
the females will lay their eggs on
the body, and the maggots must develop.
They must complete their
life cycle on the cadaver.
And the females will arrive at the
cadaver, almost immediately upon death.
And so, she'll lay her eggs
almost as soon as she arrives.
And so, that means that the,
the maggot on the cadaver, was,
hatched there,
almost as soon as she arrives and so
that, that age of the maggot correlates
then to the sign, to the time since death.
We can also use information
about insect succession, or
how insects will colonize the body in
waves as decomposition progresses,
through time and the body shifts from
what stages, stages of decomposition,
to dry stages of decomposition.
Okay, so
we see different insects specializing on
the cadaver at different
stages of decomposition.
So for example, wall flies will colonize
the cadaver immediately upon death, and
the maggots will be active feeding,

while the cadaver is in it's

wet stages of decomposition.
And there will be beetles that come and
go, they're kind of feeding on
the maggots, but they're not com,
they're not really obligate feeders there.
And then as the bio, as the body,
dehydrates, you see a shift in insects
that are feeding on the cadaver.
And so I think, and a lot of my
other colleagues think as well,
that the microbes are behaving
in a similar fashion.
They're experiencing same sort of
ecological succession being driven by
this, primi,
this very ephemeral food source and
it's shifting from wet
decomposition to dry decomposition.
So, as the body progresses through
decomposition, the insects change and
then the microbes change.
And so we think that, we can,
we can get information about time,
based on suites of organisms,
microbes and maggots that are present or
absent at particular
stages of decomposition.
>> So I do a lot of my fieldwork
outside at am specialized,
facility that we have available at
Sam Houston State, and it's called
the Southeast Texas Applied Forensic
Science Facility or STAFS, for short.
And, the STAFS facility is
a state-of-the-art decomposition facility,
that is set up in,
in a remote location, and
designed to study, human decomposition
in a very controlled manner.
And I've been working at the STAFS
facility since about 2009,
when it was first set up,
with the director, Dr. Jan Bideway.
.
And, through the generous donations
of families, we have been able to
catalog, insect diversity
on cadavers through time.
And we've started to catalog the microbial
diversity on these cadavers through time.
And so, myself and
my graduate students have a very thorough
dataset of insects that colonize cadavers.
Not just in one season, but
throughout all the seasons.
And this data set again it's
particular to east Texas.
This is a very, it's a very eco, each,
eco, er, geographic specific science.

And so we have, we have,

one of the most complete data sets for
insects, that are found
on cadavers in this area.
And we started to colle, to catalogue
the microbial diversity as well.
We have completed, a very,
very preliminary study on the internal,
community of bacteria
during decomposition.
And we were able to sample some sites
that have never been sampled before.
And so, thi, it was pretty exciting.
And we started now to catalogue
the external, microbe build diversity of,
of humans in, a natural but
controlled environment.
And, this research that we're conducting
is funded through the National Institute
of Justice.
It's a, it's a three year grant.
We're placing two bodies per season,
per year for three years.
And we're swabbing the cadavers,
at, specified time intervals.
And we're collecting the insects that
are present on the cadavers each time that
we sample.
So we're going to correlate insects and
microbes to the accumulated degree hour,
and then to each other as well.
We have a number of different
experts on the project.
And I should start by mentioning
the co-PI on my active grant, Aaron Linn.
He is a microbe biologist who
works at Sam Houston State,
University, with me as well.
And is, a co-PI on the NIJ grant.
And we work with,
on that grant really closely with, Dr. Joe
Petrosino from Baylor College of Medicine.
And one of his, former graduate students,
Embriette Hyde.
We also work with, the Knight Lab
at the University of Colorado.
We work with, Jess and, and Rob Knight.
Our research program, has been succesful
because we have been able to recruit,
a number of wonderful undergraduates
to this research project.
And these undergraduates, frequently will
transition into graduate school, and, and
get their Masters Degree from
the department of biology here.
And, they are, they're,
it's a fantastic training opportunity
to work with the staff's facility.
And to be involved in this
interdisciplinary research object.

It's, it's a wonderful, it's wonderful for

these undergraduates, and
then graduate students, to see all the
different of this research project that
we're kind of pulling in together.
I failed to mention the chemistry,
which is another big part of the project
that we're doing is trying to catalog,
particular, chemical byproducts
during decomposition as well.
And so they see,
they see all these different areas, and
they get to go out to
the field constantly.
They get this unique experience
that other students just don't get.
There are four, forensic anthropology
research facilities in the United States.
The University of Tennessee,
had the first one.
Texas has two, we have one, at,
at was in West Texas, which is a very
dry environment as opposed to the one that
I work at, which is very, wet environment.
Huntsville, Texas is about
an hour north of Houston.
And we have, temperatures and cli,
climate that's described as subtropical.
So we dont' really get, you know,
we don't really get, too much snow,
sometimes some ice, but
it's mostly very warm, very humid.
And, and so we can, we're at a very unique
environment to study the cadavers under,
but it's still very relevent to this
big metropolitan area of Houston.
So STAFS is a willed body
donor facility which means
that a person can donate
their body to science.
Or their family can donate
their body to science.
And we, we're very,
grateful for these donations.
Without these donations we wouldn't
be able to do our research.
And it's our research, I think,
that kind of serves as a backbone and
kind of puts together
scenarios in anticipation of,
you know, criminal events that,
that might be unique.
Or might require very,
specialized circumstances to help kind of
help interpret those,
those sis, situations.
Again at STAFS we're very grateful for
these donations.
And one of the things tha,t
the director of the facility does

annually is a a dedication ceremony for

all of the donors and
all of their families, to show our
appreciation, for their generous gifts.
that, that are research program relies on.