**3. Parasitic Hymenoptera as alternate forensic indicator species**

All parasitic wasps that frequent animal remains rely on a parasitoid lifestyle, regardless of the species or developmental stage of host used for progeny development. What this means is that the host will die as a result of the parasitic association, because of the action of venom injected by females at the time of oviposition, envenomation via larval salivary secretions, or through the feeding activity of developing larvae on or in the host [21, 22]. Parasitic wasps are distinct from most carrion-inhabiting flies in that they are necrophilous, or attracted to carrion, but are not necrophagous, and thus do not feed on animal remains. In most instances, the small wasps utilize larvae, prepupae, or puparial stages of flies belonging to the families Calliphor‐ idae, Sarcophagidae, and Muscidae that are feeding on, under, or near a decomposing carcass. The wasps are best known to forensic practitioners through unfortunate encounters during death investigations, when their parasitic efforts compromise attempts to raise flies in the laboratory for species identification or during developmental experiments [1]. While these frustrating occurrences are common, parasitic wasps possess untapped potential to serve as forensic indicator species; filling in key information gaps remaining after fly evidence has been considered.

The idea of using parasitic Hymenoptera as forensic indicator species is not new, but in practice, their biology is rarely applied to criminal investigations [23–25]. Why? Part of the problem stems from the fact that parasitic wasps often go unnoticed at crime scenes. The oversight is attributable to their small size (most that frequent carrion are less than 2 mm in length) and tendency to arrive during later stages of decay, when the early fly colonizers have already dispersed or are nearing the wandering stage associated with post-feeding. In practice, early colonizers are favored as ecological evidence for all the reasons given for necrophagous Diptera. More significant than size or period of activity on carrion is that the life history characteristics of most parasitoids, other than the pteromalid *Nasonia vitripennis* (Walker), that frequent carrion have not been examined or only limited aspects of the biology and behavior of a few species are known [26, 27]. For example, developmental thresholds and temperatureinfluenced developmental data have been worked out for only two parasitoids, *N*. *vitripen‐ nis* and *Tachinaephagus zealandicus* Ashmead (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae) [28–31]. Even less is known about seasonal occurrences of parasitoids, with the most extensive work being conducted on *N*. *vitripennis* and to a much lesser extent with *T*. *zealandicus* and *Alysia mandu‐ cator* (Panzer) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) [29, 31–34], and the parasitoid fauna of most biogeographical regions has never been examined [35–37]. The data available for most species relates to their potential as biological control agents of filth flies, namely muscids, which generally do not translate to carrion communities, or the parasitoids of such flies are not encountered on animal remains [29, 38]. Despite these limitations, several parasitoids have been collected from forensically important flies in Australia, Europe, South America, and United States, and thereby are purported to be potential forensic indicator species [25, 29, 36, 37, 39–41]. In Section 3.1, an examination of whether such potential truly exists for parasitic Hymenoptera is discussed, as will the areas of parasitoid biology in need of further investi‐ gation to put them in line as alternative forensic indicator species.
