AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Franceso Redi was an Italian naturalist who challenged the ancient belief of spontaneous generation of maggots on decaying meat in 1668. He believed that maggots could be prevented if flies were not allowed direct contact with the meat.

Detailed explanation-2: -Redi went on to demonstrate that dead maggots or flies would not generate new flies when placed on rotting meat in a sealed jar, whereas live maggots or flies would. This disproved both the existence of some essential component in once-living organisms, and the necessity of fresh air to generate life.

Detailed explanation-3: -Experimentation by Francesco Redi in the 17th century presented the first significant evidence refuting spontaneous generation by showing that flies must have access to meat for maggots to develop on the meat.

Detailed explanation-4: -And so first, what we have is Francesco Redi, who was an Italian scientist in the 1600s, who was the first scientist to challenge or attempt to disprove spontaneous generation. And he showed that fly eggs and maggots do not spontaneously generate from decaying meat.

Detailed explanation-5: -Though correctly concluding that the maggots came from eggs laid on the meat by flies, Redi, surprisingly, still believed that the process of spontaneous generation applied in such cases as gall flies and intestinal worms. Redi is known as a poet chiefly for his Bacco in Toscana (1685; “Bacchus in Tuscany”).