Newly discovered beetle species from Pune has significance in forensic science

A newly discovered beetle species from Morgaon village in Pune district is important for forensic science as it helps detect the time of death of an animal or human. The beetle has been named Moreshwar as it was collected near Moreshwar Temple.

The species was discovered by the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), Pune region, and the study on this discovery was published recently on April 12 in the New Zealand-based peer-reviewed international journal Zootaxa.

‘Omorgus (Afromorgus) moreshwar’, is named after the Moreshwar Temple (or Shri Mayureshwar), located in the village Morgaon in Pune, which is also an Ashtavinayak pilgrimage.

The recently discovered beetles from the family Trogidae are necrophagous and are, therefore, also called keratin beetles. After the death of an organism, during the decomposition of a body, blowflies are amongst the first ones to arrive in the early stages.

Meanwhile, the final successional stage is with the arrival of the keratin feeders, thus their importance in forensic science is immense.

The beetle was discovered by an Indian scientist Aparna Sureshchandra Kalawate who works with the Zoological Survey of India, Western Regional Centre (WRC), Pune.

She is the first Indian scientist who is working on Trogid beetles and has described 2 new species. To date, only foreign scientists have described the Indian trogid fauna.

The paper on this discovery was co-authored by Werner P Strümpher, director of the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, Pretoria, South Africa.

The study conducted by ZSI is in continuation of their discovery of the beetle last year i.e. Omorgus (Omorgus) khandesh Strumpher and Kalawate in the year 2023.

“In the same paper, we have given an illustrated catalogue of all 22 valid species with their available synonyms of the subgenus Afromorgus known from the Oriental and Palaearctic Regions with some taxonomic changes. This will help the budding researchers who want to take up their research studies in this complex and the less studied groups in India” said Kalawate.

The beetles of this group are sometimes called hide beetles as they tend to cover their body under the soil and hide. They are not photogenic; they are usually black or grey and encrusted in dirt. Their bumpy appearance is distinct, with short, dense setae all over the body.

The beetles from this family are mainly associated with bird and mammal nests or burrows and the details of their life histories are poorly known.

“The keratin beetles are less studied in the oriental region generally and India particularly as compared to the other part of the world. Also, considering the importance of these beetle species, we need to make the public aware of their importance and appearance. I aim to document more species from this less studied group from India as our country is biodiversity rich and many more species are yet to be uncovered/described,” said Kalawate.