Image: Wikimedia Commons

pupa

Life stage of some insects undergoing transformation

Instance of: class of living thing
Subclass of: developmental stage of animal

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

A pupa is the life stage of insects from the Holometabola clade undergoing metamorphosis between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in their life cycle, the stages thereof being egg, larva, pupa and imago (adult). The processes of entering and completing the pupal stage are controlled by the insect's hormones, especially juvenile hormone, prothoracicotropic hormone, and ecdysone. The act of becoming a pupa is called pupation, and the act of emerging from the pupal case is called eclosion or emergence.

Overview

All data

37 statements · 32% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Said to be the same as: chrysalis
Follows: insect larva
Followed by: imago

On other databases

31 identifiers linking pupa across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

32%

externally sourced

Source last edited August 17, 2026. AIDb refreshes this page daily.

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AIDb. (2026). pupa (Q170595). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/pupa-Q170595