Microbial Community Succession of Submerged Bones in an Aquatic Habitat

After death, microbes (including bacteria and fungi) colonize carrion, which come from a variety of sources including the carrion itself, the environment, and possibly insects/scavengers. As carrion progresses through decomposition to skeletonization for terrestrial deaths, or sunken remains for aquatic death, carrion bones are subjected to microbial alteration or bioerosion. The predictable succession of microbes on bone evidence over decomposition could be useful for forensics, specifically with postmortem internal estimation (PMI) or in the case of aquatic death, postmortem submersion interval estimation (PMSI). To further explore this utility, we described the microbial communities (bacteria and fungi) on and within bones that decomposed in an aquatic environment using targeted amplicon sequencing.We described the microbial communities (bacteria and fungi respectively) on and within the bones using high throughput sequencing methods. Overall, we provide further evidence that postmortem microbial communities of internal and external bone are distinct and undergo predictable succession, demonstrating the potential utility for forensic applications. We described bioerosion for aquatic bone evidence over long-term decomposition, that could potentially be useful for PMSI estimation in unattended death cases, such as cold cases.