page_title: Calliphora vomitoria
section_title: Life cycle
hierarchical_section_title: Calliphora vomitoria / Life cycle
caption_attribution_description: A Blow-fly (Calliphora, probably Calliphora vomitória) Photo by Jens Buurgaard Nielsen
context_page_description: Calliphora vomitoria, known as the blue bottle fly, orange-bearded blue bottle, or bottlebee is a species of blow fly, a species in the family Calliphoridae. Calliphora vomitoria is the type species of the genus Calliphora. It is common throughout many continents including Europe, Americas, and Africa. They are fairly large flies, nearly twice the size of the housefly. They can be easily identified by their shiny, blue bodies.
  While adult flies feed on nectar, females deposit their eggs on rotting corpses, making them important forensic insects, as their eggs and timing of oviposition can be used to estimate time of death.
context_section_description: Blue bottle flies have the complete cycle of egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Development usually takes around 2 weeks. A female blue bottle fly lays her eggs where she feeds, usually in decaying meat, garbage, or feces. Pale whitish larvae, commonly called maggots, soon hatch from the eggs and immediately begin feeding on carcasses of dead animals and on the decomposing matter where they were hatched. After a few days of feeding, they are fully grown. At that time they crawl away to a drier place where they burrow into soil or similar matter and pupate into tough brown cocoons. The pupal stage is the longest stage of the development cycle.  
  After two or three weeks, the adults emerge from the pupal stage to mate, beginning the cycle again. During cold weather, pupae and adults can hibernate until higher temperatures revive them.
caption: A dorsal closeup of the fly
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