Access Interval
Definition
Any period after death during which insects could not reach the body, whether through concealment, refrigeration, submersion, or wrapping. The access interval inflates the gap between true PMI and mPMI.
Related terms
- Colonisation
- The event when gravid female blow flies (or other pioneer species) locate the body and deposit eggs or first-instar larvae. The entomological...
- Larval Age Method
- Estimating mPMI by identifying the oldest, most developed insect stage present, staging it against a developmental timeline corrected for local temperature, and...
- Minimum PMI (Period of Insect Activity)
- The elapsed time since the first insects colonised the body. Because access may have been delayed, this is a lower bound on...
- Postmortem Interval (PMI)
- The elapsed time since death. Entomological PMI estimation uses the developmental stage and known growth rates of insects colonising the body to...
- Succession Method
- Estimating elapsed time from the species assemblage on the body by matching it to a local succession sequence: a known ecological progression...
Explained in
- Estimating the Postmortem Interval: PrinciplesAny period after death during which insects could not reach the body, whether through concealment, refrigeration, submersion, or wrapping. The access interval...