Life Cycle
The eggs that the female lays on the dung pat will hatch into larvae after 1–2 days, depending on temperature. The larvae quickly burrow into the dung for protection and feed on it. At 20°C, larvae undergo three molts over five days, during which they grow exponentially. After growth, larvae spend another five days emptying their stomachs before pupation, where no additional body mass is gained. After 10–20 days the larvae burrow into the soil around and beneath the dung and pupate. The time needed for the juvenile flies to emerge can vary from 10 days at 25°C to 80 days at 10°C or less. The smaller females typically emerge a few days before the males. The fitness of the resulting juveniles is greatly dependent on the quality of the dung in which they were placed. Factors affecting dung quality include water content, nutritional quality, parasites, and drugs or other chemicals given to the animal.
Yellow dung flies are anautogenous. In order to become sexually mature and produce viable eggs or sperm they must feed on prey to acquire sufficient proteins and lipids. Females under nutritional stress will have higher rates of egg mortality and less survival of offspring to adult emergence. Scathophaga stercoraria can then produce anywhere from 4 to 10 clutches per lifetime. The adults are active throughout much of the year in most moderate climates.
Read more about this topic: Scathophaga Stercoraria
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or cycle:
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the childs life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of playthat embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.”
—Robert M. Pirsig (b. 1928)