Acta Tropica 235 (2022) 106662 Available online 20 August 2022 0001-706X/© 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Size does matter: intraspecifc geometric morphometric analysis of wings of the blowfy Chrysomya albiceps (Diptera: Calliphoridae) S´ ergio J.M. Rodrigues-Filho a, b, * , Catarina Prado e Castro c , Luís Filipe Lopes d, e , Isabel Pereira da Fonseca f, g , Maria Teresa Rebelo a a Departamento de Biologia Animal, Centro de Estudos do Ambiente e do Mar/Faculdade de Ciˆ encias da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, Lisboa 1749-016, Portugal b Departamento de Engenharia Ambiental, Universidade do Estado do Amap´ a, Avenida Presidente Vargas, 650 - Central, Macap´ a, AP 68900-070, Brazil c Centro de Estudos do Ambiente e do Mar (CESAM), Departamento de Biologia, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro 3810-193, Portugal d Global Health and Tropical Medicine, GHTM, Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical, IHMT, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, UNL, Rua da Junqueira 100, Lisboa 1349- 008, Portugal e Centro de Ecologia, Evoluç˜ ao e Alteraç˜ oes Ambientais (cE3c), Faculdade de Ciˆ encias da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, Lisbon, Portugal f Centro de Investigaç˜ ao Interdisciplinar em Sanidade Animal (CIISA), Faculdade de Medicina Veterin´ aria, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Universidade T´ ecnica, Lisboa 1300-477, Portugal g Laborat´ orio Associado para Ciˆ encia Animal e Veterin´ aria (AL4AnimalS) A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Calliphoridae Sexual dimorphism Temperature Wing shape Wing size ABSTRACT Blowfies have forensic, sanitary and veterinary importance, as well as being pollinators, parasitoids and ecological bioindicators. There is still little work with real data and from experiments assessing the relationship between blowfies’ morphologic features and environmental and demographic factors. The present work tests whether the variation, in the shape and size, of Chrysomya albiceps (Wiedemann, 1819) wings is infuenced by the following factors: 1) time; 2) temperature; 3) sex and; 4) different types of carcasses (pig, dog/cat and whale). Male and female wings from four different sites collected in six different years were used to obtain wing size and shape of C. albiceps. Analyses between wing shape and the variables tested had low explanatory power, even though they had statistical support. However, it was possible to identify differences in wing shape between males and females, with good returns in sex identifcation. The comparison between wing size and the variables tested showed that wing size has a negative relationship with temperature, signifcant differences between sexes, slight variation over time and no infuence by carcass types. Furthermore, wing size infuenced wing shape. Under- standing population-specifc characteristics of C. albiceps provide important insights about how the species reacts under specifc conditions. 1. Introduction Insect wings are membranous structures with functions ranging from fight to protection from external shocks (Parchem et al. 2007; Salcedo and Socha, 2020). Furthermore, they are important structures in the morphological distinction of groups (Gullan and Cranston, 2014). One of the ways to study morphology of these structures and that has grown in recent years is Geometric Morphometry - GM - (Cooke and Terhune 2015; Tatsuta et al. 2018). GM consists of a set of multivariate statistical techniques to visualize and analyze the morphology of insects through landmarks in an orthogonal space (Dujardin 2008). The landmarks generate ‘x,y’ coordinates, used to generate shape and size variables to be associated with covariates of interest (Bookstein 1991). Geometric Morphometry applied to wings is used to elucidate evolutionary effects, infuence of environmental factors and ecological relationships (Chazot et al. 2016; Ivorra et al. 2019; Lemic et al. 2020), in addition to serving as a complement to molecular analyses (Sauer et al. 2020). Wing shape has been widely used to identify differences between species (Sontigun et al. 2019; Limsopatham et al. 2021) and between populations (Lim- sopatham et al. 2018). The GM of wing size is studied along with shape (Garz´ on and Schweigmann 2018), as it can infuence wing shape, an association known as allometry (Benítez et al. 2013). Recently, wing size * Corresponding author at: Departamento de Engenharia Ambiental, Universidade do Estado do Amap´ a, Avenida Presidente Vargas, 650 - Central, Macap´ a, AP 68900-070, Brazil. E-mail address: sergioflhokryo@gmail.com (S.J.M. Rodrigues-Filho). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Acta Tropica journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/actatropica https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actatropica.2022.106662 Received 22 June 2022; Received in revised form 17 August 2022; Accepted 18 August 2022