BIOLOGY

PROJECT

BIOLOGY PROJECT 1
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project

entitled, STUDY OF DEVELOPMENTAL
STAGES OF HOUSEFLY/COCKROACH being
submitted by ABHAY MOHAN.M.S of class 12 D
is a bonafied record of work done by him under
the supervision and guidance with his own effort
as per the specification of the Central Board of
Secondary Education as request for SSCE 2022-
23

Teacher in charge Examiner

BIOLOGY PROJECT 2
CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

AIM

INTRODUCTION

MATERIALS REQUIRED

SUMMARY

CONTENT

GALLERY

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIOLOGY PROJECT 3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

It Gives me great pleasure to

express my sincere gratitude towards my
biology teachers Mrs. K.S.Soumya and
P.R.Ushas for their valuable guidance and
support. I thank god for showering the light
of knowledge and wisdom on me.
I am grateful to our principal and
all other for their cooperation. I like to
thank my parents and friends who had help
me with their suggestion. It became more
helpful in various phases of the
completition of the process

BIOLOGY PROJECT 4
AIM
Insects in general,
together with other invertebrates, are
incredibly successful and adaptable. As a
group, they will probably survive as long
as Planet Earth can support life in any
form, but many individual species are
very vulnerable to rapid change due to
human influence. This makes it
impossible for them to survive within
many of the localities which would
otherwise provide them with
suitable habitats. Therefore it is
necessary to protect them also. So in this
project we are going to make a study of
two insects such as housefly and
cockroach.
BIOLOGY PROJECT 5
 INTRODUCTION

Insects constitute the largest class of animal

representing over 7.50,000 species. They are the
most successful land invertebrates, and the only one
major competitors with humans for dominance in
the world. Today the life of every human being is
affected by insects one way or the other. Quite a
number are closely connected with some of our
diseases like malaria, cholera, plague etc. and day
life. Housefly (Musca nebula) and cockroach
(Periplanta Americana) are two such insect which
affect the human life the most.
Cockroaches are nocturnal and
omnivorous. They come out of their hiding places
during the night in search of food. Cockroaches
harm us by chewing our clothes, books and leather
wares when normal food in scanty.
Keeping in view the importance of these
insects, the study of their developmental stages has
been taken for the present project.

BIOLOGY PROJECT 6
MATERIALS REQUIRED

Preserved specimens of different

developmental stages of
housefly/cockroach, notebook, pen
etc.

BIOLOGY PROJECT 7
 SUMMARY

The average cockroach lifespan is about

twenty to thirty weeks given that the roach
has ready access to food and water. The first
stage in the life of cockroach females and
males alike is the egg stage. Eggs are
produced in what are called egg capsules.
Each capsule can contain around 30 to 48
eggs, which means that many little
cockroaches should hatch. An adult female
cockroach has the ability to produce up to
eight egg capsules in their lifetime which
equates to nearly 400 cockroaches from one
roach during its life cycle. Cockroach life
span will vary dependent on the conditions
of the area where the roach is living.

BIOLOGY PROJECT 8
CONTENT
A. Developmental stages of Housefly(Musca nebula)
Egg: The white egg, about 1.2 mm in length,
is laid singly but eggs are piled in small groups.
Each female fly can lay up to 500 eggs in
several batches of 75 to 150 eggs over a three
to four day period. The number of eggs
produced is a function of female size which,
itself, is principally a result of larval nutrition.
Maximum egg production occurs at
intermediate temperatures, 25 to 30°C. Often,
several flies will deposit their eggs in close
proximity, leading to large masses of larvae and
pupae. Eggs must remain moist or they will not
hatch.

BIOLOGY PROJECT 9
Larva: Early instar larvae are 3 to 9 mm long,
typical creamy whitish in color, cylindrical but
tapering toward the head. The head contains
one pair of dark hooks. The posterior spiracles
are slightly raised and the spiracular openings
are sinuous slits which are completely
surrounded by an oval black border. The legless
maggot emerges from the egg in warm weather
within eight to 20 hours. Maggots immediately
begin feeding on and developing in the material
in which the egg was laid.
The larva goes through three instars and a full-
grown maggot, 7 to 12 mm long, has a greasy,
cream-colored appearance. High-moisture
manure favors the survival of the house fly
larva. The optimal temperature for larval
development is 35 to 38°C, though larval
survival is greatest at 17 to 32°C.

BIOLOGY PROJECT 10
 Nutrient-rich substrates such
as animal manure provide an excellent
developmental substrate. Very little manure
is needed for larval development, and sand
or soil containing small amounts of
degraded manure allows for successful
belowground development. When the
maggot is full-grown, it can crawl up to 50
feet to a dry, cool place near breeding
material and transform to the pupal stage.

Pupa: The pupal stage, about 8 mm long, is

passed in a pupal case formed from the last
larval skin which varies in color from yellow,
red, brown, to black as the pupa ages. The
shape of the pupa is quite different from the
larva, being bluntly rounded at both ends.

BIOLOGY PROJECT 11
 Pupae complete their development in two
to six days at 32 to 37°C, but require 17
to 27 days at about 14°C). The emerging
fly escapes from the pupal case through the
use of an alternately swelling and shrinking
sac, called the ptilinum, on the front of its
head which it uses like a pneumatic
hammer to break through the case.

Adult: The house fly is 6 to 7 mm long,

with the female usually larger than the
male. The female can be distinguished
from the male by the relatively wide space
between the eyes (in males, the eyes almost
touch). The head of the adult fly has
reddish-eyes and sponging mouthparts

BIOLOGY PROJECT 12
 The thorax bears four narrow black stripes
and there is a sharp upward bend in the
fourth longitudinal wing vein. The abdomen
is gray or yellowish with dark midline and
irregular dark markings on the sides. The
underside of the male is yellowish. Adults
usually live 15 to 25 days, but may live up to
two months. Without food, they survive only
about two to three days. Longevity is
enhanced by availability of suitable food,
especially sugar. Access to animal manure
does not lengthen adult life and they live
longer at cooler temperatures. They require
food before they will copulate, and
copulation is completed in as few as two
minutes or as long as 15 minutes.

BIOLOGY PROJECT 13
Oviposition commences four to 20 days after
copulation. Female flies need access to
suitable food (protein) to allow them to
produce eggs, and manure alone is not
adequate. The potential reproductive capacity
of flies is tremendous, but fortunately can
never be realized.
The flies are inactive at
night, with ceilings, beams and overhead wires
within buildings, trees, and shrubs, various
kinds of outdoor wires, and grasses reported
as overnight resting sites. In poultry ranches,
the nighttime, outdoor aggregations of flies
are found mainly in the branches, and shrubs,
whereas almost all of the indoor populations
generally aggregated in the ceiling area of
poultry houses.

BIOLOGY PROJECT 14
B. Developmental stages of Cockroach(Periplanita Americana)

Reproduction - The Eggs (Ootheca):

Their life cycle begins with laying
eggs, they mainly give 10 to 50 eggs in one term in
warm, humid conditions. It takes cockroaches
about one to two months to hatch, but the egg
stage lasts for 14 to 100 days depending on
climatic changes in the environment Higher
temperature leads to an increase in the rate of
development. Most of the females create multiple
eggs during their lifetimes. Example: 300 eggs in a
year.

The eggshell covering the abdomen

of female Cockroaches is known as ootheca. The
eggs are carried in the ootheca by the Cockroaches
to protect them until they reach the nymph stage.

BIOLOGY PROJECT 15
The number of eggs an ootheca may hold
varies depending on the species. Depending on
the habitat in which they live, these eggs hatch
into nymphs

Stage 2: Baby Cockroach - The

Nymph:
This is the second stage of
development and is known as the nymphal
stage. This process undergoes several molts,
growing little each day by day and after this,
they shed their skins. In their earlier stage, they
have soft, white bodies that harden and change
the color to brown or gray. They are fully
developed in their last molt. The nymph stage
lasts a different amount of time depending on
the species. It also depends on the surroundings
and whether or not predators are there. The
nymph stage can last anywhere from 11 to 14
months.
BIOLOGY PROJECT 16
The nymph enters the adult stage after
completing many stages of molting and
developing features such as wings.

Stage 3: Developed Cockroach- The

Adult:
From nymph cockroaches to
adult cockroaches they develop a pair of wings.
Their life span varies from species to species,
some live for two months, or some two live for
two years. They are omnivorous in nature-they
feed on paper to the leftover food material.
When female cockroaches are fully developed
they lay mainly 500-600 offspring.
The nymph Cockroach's pair of
wings is one method to tell them apart from
adult Cockroaches

BIOLOGY PROJECT 17
 Adult Cockroaches have a lifetime that
varies by species. Some species live for only two
months, while others live for nearly two years.
Cockroaches are omnivorous, eating
everything from paper strips to leftover food
from the night before.

BIOLOGY PROJECT 18
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIFE CYCLE
OF COCKROACH & HOUSEFLY

 The key difference between life cycle of

butterfly and cockroach is that the life
cycle of butterfly consists of four stages;
that are the egg, pupa, larva and adult,
while the life cycle of cockroach consists
of three stages; that are the egg, nymph,
and adult.
 Depending on the type of species, the
life cycle of the butterfly varies. However,
different varieties of cockroaches have a
common cycle.
 Butterfly undergo complete
metamorphosis, on the other hand
cockroach undergo incomplete
metamorphogrnrsis

BIOLOGY PROJECT 19
GALLERY

a) Adult
butterfly

b)larva

c)pupa

BIOLOGY PROJECT 20
 d)Prepupa
and
sequence of
puparia by
age for the
house fly

e)Eggs of
house fly

f)Eggs of
butterfly

BIOLOGY PROJECT 21
 g)Baby
cockroach
{nymph}

h)Adult
cockroach

BIOLOGY PROJECT 22
CONCLUSION

We had seen the different

developmental stages of housefly and
cockroach, in general, flies are despised by
others due to their constant “buzzing”
sound or when they circulate
continuously around your food. Different
species of flies are drawn to different
food sources and therefore the flies fall
for different baits. Flies are involved in
spreading various diseases and hence
learning their life cycle is important to
escape from the diseases.

BIOLOGY PROJECT 23
BIBLIOGRAPHY

• https://www.vedantu.com/biology/cockroach
-life-cycle
• https://byjus.com/biology/fly-life-cycle/
• file:///C:/Users/hp/Documents/Biology%20p
roject.pdf
• https://collegedunia.com/exams/cockroach-
life-cycle-biology-articleid-1252

BIOLOGY PROJECT 24