Biological studies and Molecular identification of Blowfly, Calliphora vicina Rob-Desvoidy (Diptera: Calliphoridae) in the central of Erbil province

This research aimed to study the life cycle and duration of each biological stage of the blow fly Calliphora vicina. Adult specimens were collected from various locations in the Erbil provinces and reared on decaying chicken meat. Each female fly produced between 440 to 620 eggs during her lifetime, laying them in clusters of up to 180 eggs at a time. The larvae feed for three to four days under warm, optimal conditions, with the puparium forming two to three days later. The entire life cycle of this insect is completed in approximately 15 days. Morphologically, the adult fly is robust, dark black-blue in color, about 5-12 mm in length, while the immature stages (1st, 2nd, and 3rd larval instars) are vermiform, creamy-white, and feature a distinct cephaloskeleton and varying body lengths, while the Larva 1: Vermiform, pale yellow, length 1.7-3.4 mm.the slits of posterior spiracles were conducted to gather slightly appeared as one part,. Larva 11 Vermiform, Milky white –pale yellow, length 4.7-7.8 mm.and sometimes absent dorsally, the slits of the posterior spiracles were clearly found and separated in to two lines; . Larva III: The mature larva milky white, reaches a length 14-19 mm. Female: resembles the male but differs by the eyes are an holoptic separated from one another by board frons. The slits of the posterior spiracles were distinctly observed and divided into three lines. Another part of the study focused on identifying the insect using molecular methods, specifically PCR. Species-specific primers were prepared and the COI sequence of samples (550 bp) was aligned using the BLAST program from GenBank (http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) with the submitted accession number PP733158 to compare our amplified sequences with other stored sequences. The BLAST results indicated that the highest identity query sequence was recorded in the NCBI gene bank for insect identification.