**3.1. The case for forensic relevance**

Many species of parasitic wasps do show promise as alternative forensic indicator species, especially pupal parasitoids. The question that must be asked is if parasitic Hymenoptera were not overlooked at crime scenes (and, of course, the needed life history data were available), what information could they reveal about death? There are at least four pieces of information that can be derived from parasitic wasps in forensic investigations: (1) Parasitic wasps can extend the PMI window to include the period of time after necrophagous flies cease feeding to when a corpse is discovered, (2) wasp host preferences and seasonal occurrences can reveal if a body was moved from another location prior to discovery, (3) artifacts of past wasp activity remain at the scene for many years after they have dispersed permitting interpretation of period of activity and seasonality, and (4) foraging behavior of adults can be used to locate concealed bodies [1, 23, 42, 43]. In some instance, parasitic wasps have already been useful in case studies (i.e., PMI estimations; [23, 25, 40, 44]), and in yet others, the full potential of fly parasitoids has not been realized because key aspects of their biology remains poorly under‐ stood.
