Fungi: biological micro-vestiges in a case of crime?

TRANCHIDA MARÍA CECILIA

Bogotá

Seminario; 5to Seminario Iberoamericano de Geociencias Forenses; 2022

Universidad Antonio Nariño, CYTED y IUGS

Forensic mycology is a term used to descript the study of the fungal species potentially useful in establishing biological evidence in order to recognize the place where a human cadaver decomposition happened, and relate the crime scene with the suspicious. The different fungal groups have been postulate as tool for recognize burial human places and estimate the burial time of them. The authors established two big groups called ammonia fungi and post putrefaction fungi to determine burial times. More recently, this discipline was used to relate the suspicious whit the place where the body was found, making mention the presence of fungal species as trace evidence or biological micro-vestiges. The case studied in this work, showed the possibility to use micology as biological evidence due to presence of Bipolaris cynodontis, was presence as representative specie in the soil collected in the crime scene and the shoes of suspicious. Bipolaris cynodontis belong to the ammonia fungal group, because is a Ascomycota Teleomorph, that appear in the soil samples in the beginnings of cadaver decomposition (less than 30 days). The cadaver found in this study had been reported missing in the Buenos Aires province, Argentina, twenty-five days before its discovery, so the presence of Bipolaris cynodontis in the sample of the soil sample is accord whit results previously mentioned by researchers. In addition, its presence from sample of the suspicious´s shoes, made possible, whit others evidence groups, relate him with the crime scene.