The search for a null hypothesis in vertebrate decomposition: should insects be included?

Field research in vertebrate decomposition has intensified over the past fifty years, focusing on such areas as 1) general stages of decomposition (fresh, bloat, post-bloat, etc.), 2) insect community succession, 3) individual insect specimen minimum postmortem interval estimates, and 4) carrion surface microbial community succession. The ultimate goal of this research has been to successfully predict these processes of decomposition in real-world scenarios based upon research scene data. None of these inquiry lines have been successful in  predicting decomposition at a new site based upon data from a previous study. Because of this problem, much forensic entomological research is often so site-specific that it is largely unrealistic to apply to novel circumstances of decomposition. Recently a call has gone out for a decomposition “null hypothesis” against which all sites can be compared. Such a biologically meaningful null hypothesis would function much like the Hardy-Weinberg equation did for population genetics—providing a framework in which sites can be evaluated to determine how they deviate from a hypothesis of no change. We present one such possible hypothesis, rate of mass loss via evaporation, and ask the question: where do insects fit in such a model?