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All animals die,almost all decompose and are recycled into natural ecosystems.However,nearly all of decomposition ecology is founded on that of decomposing plant organic matter.Consequently,animal tissue decomposition and nutrient recycling has been understudied,in large part do to technological limitations for studying bacterial and other microbial components of the process,but also because such research is odorous,uncomfortable,distasteful and sometimes dangerous.In recent years there have been major technological innovations that have facilitated novel microbial mechanisms and interactions with arthropods that drive carrion decomposition.There also has been a more broad scale appeal to the usefulness of such basic biological questions for forensics,human and environmental health and biomass conversion and waste management.For instance,blow flies that use carrion and other forms of decomposing heterotrophic biomass can be important vectors in disease systems,including infectious food-borne diseases of cholera,shigellosis and salmonellosis.Further,understanding the microbial–invertebrate community interactions of decomposing carrion can be important for large mammal biomass waste conversion.The importance of carrion decomposition in the natural environment is appreciated.However,mechanistic understandings and quantitative assessments of the population biology,community structure,assembly and other biological dynamics important to nutrient and energy cycling are lacking.Carrion ecology research brings together the fields of molecular ecology,microbiology,entomology,population biology,community and ecosystem ecology that will hold promise for diverse applications in forensics,human and environmental health,waste management and protein production.This presentation is intended to synthesize multiple scientific disciplines to understand the multi-scale mechanisms and processes that dictate carrion decomposition,identifying ways that this process can be understood and applied in a variety of settings and circumstances.