One Buprestis aurulenta larva emerged after 51 years.
Life cycle is defined as the sequence of events from egg to reproducing adult.
Metamorphosis is a characteristic of insect life cycles, and the different stages become distinct units of development time. Each of these units must face environmental exigencies often quite different from those of the others. Insects have solved the problems of synchronizing life cycles to seasonal periodicities and responding to other biotic and abiotic factors with an impressive array of tactical alternatives. On the other hand, there are many cases in which life cycles are made longer by prolonged development time rather than diapause. This paper is a literature review of the longest life cycles in the class Insecta.