Biology of House Flies
Every summer, you are bound to run into the same problem, as dozens or even hundreds of house flies invade your home, filling your days and nights with their annoying buzz and presenting very unappealing visuals.
In this article, we are going to discuss the biology of the house fly, but first it is important to understand why we bother and why you should read it. The answer is in the integrated pest control approach. It sounds like some fancy left wing term, but in fact IPC is by far the most effective way of handling pests in addition to being the least dangerous to humans and to other beings, not to mention the environment.
The foundation of an integrated pest control strategy is in gaining knowledge of a particular pest. This allows a pest control company or an individual to properly address an infestation or a potential infestation by understanding the breeding habits, appearances, and preferred habitats of different pest species. With this knowledge the problem can be taken care of at the source, rather than wasting time and taking the health risks inherent in strategies such as toxic sprays and poisons. So, let’s take a look into the biology of the common house fly.
The house fly
House flies actually come in dozens and dozens of different varieties, a fact which you have no doubt noticed as you chase them around the house with your swatter or clean up their corpses after a successful battle. The actual species doesn’t matter too much for our purposes on this web site, since they can all be dealt with the same way and have similar eating and breeding habits.
One of the main problems with house flies is that they are very adept at exploiting any kind of crack within a house or building in order to get in.
House fly life cycle
As with all insects, house flies hatch from age as larva, affectionately known to humans as maggots. The maggot stage will last for a few days or a few months, depending on the temperature. In warmer temperatures the entire life cycle of the house fly will last for only one week.
Unlike many other pests, the larval stage is not the stage in which house flies cause problems. Although they prefer to eat disgusting substances at this stage, they are in fact not harmful. Most noticeably, maggots were once used to eat away dead tissue in hospitals, and are doing so again as more and more strains of bacteria become resistant to medicine.
The adult flies, on the other hand, are a problem. They carry several diseases, which we go over in more detail in the article The Problem with House Flies. Female house flies will also reproduce very rapidly, laying up to 9,000 eggs in their short lives.
Habitat of house flies
Adult flies really have no permanent home beyond everywhere, and it’s the larval maggots that can be found in one spot. They can be found in warm and humid spots which contain plenty of food, and this usually means manure piles, house plant dirt, compost, and garbage.