Maggots, Meat, and Mayhem

Overview

Objectives/Goals The object of my experiment is to find out if, and how, the number of maggots on a piece of beef affects the length of their life cycle. I tested to see if the number of maggots on a controlled amount of beef liver would affect how long the maggots would take to grow from egg to pupa. My hypothesis was that the increase in the number of maggots on a controlled piece of meat would decrease the length of the maggots# life cycle. Methods/Materials I conducted my test with wild fly eggs collected by leaving a piece of beef liver out for a day. I raised the maggots in shallow round containers. There were 4 sets of containers with 10 eggs in them and 4 sets with 20 eggs. Each container had 5 grams of beef live in it. I repeated this setup 5 times. The testing environment was controlled, the temperature, humidity, amount of meat and all other factors were held constant. The number of maggots was the only variable. Conclusions/Discussion My results show that the number of maggots does have an effect on the length of their life cycle. The trend was that the greater the number of maggots on a piece of beef liver, the shorter the time they took to grow from egg to pupa.

Competition history

• CSEF 2005 Zoology · Entry S1914

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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