Community Ecology

A community is a temporal and spatial assemblage of organisms occupying the same geographic area or region. In forensic entomology, one may consider a community as those organisms associated with decomposing vertebrate remains (e.g., human cadavers), or what has been deemed as the necrobiome (Benbow et al. 2013a). The necrobiome consists of microbes (e.g., bacteria, fungi, and protists), arthropods, and vertebrate consumers that utilize carrion as a resource patch for feeding, for breeding, and as a habitat. Thus, species of the necrobiome should follow the general rules of community ecology principles such as species sorting, succession, and aggregation.

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