About 3 days under optimum conditions. The two sexes, hermaphrodites and males, are each about 1 mm in length but differ in appearance as adults.
Hermaphrodites produce both oocytes and sperm and can reproduce by self-fertilization.
A hermaphrodite that has not mated lays about 300 eggs during its reproductive life span. Juveniles hatch, and develop through four molts. The mature adult is fertile for about 4 days and then lives for an additional 10-15 days. This nematode is used extensively as a model system by various disciplines to study behavior, aging, molecular biology, genetics, etc. The adult hermaphrodite has only 959 somatic nuclei, and the adult male has only 1031.