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Metamorphosis: a life-changing event
BBC Wildlife
|November 2024
WITH EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST JV CHAMARY
WE FIRST ENCOUNTER metamorphosis through children’s books such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in which (spoiler alert!) the insatiable insect ends up turning into a beautiful butterfly. This process – a spectacular transformation in an animal’s form or ‘morphology’ – produces dramatic differences between larvae and adults.
Which animals metamorphose?
Metamorphosis is characteristic of insects and amphibians, but it’s also found in specific groups. Flatfish are a clear case among vertebrates: a fish starts with two sides to its body – bilateral symmetry – but the right eye migrates to the left side and its dorsal fin becomes shorter as it transitions from a free-swimming larva to a ‘benthic’ or bottom-dwelling adult on the seafloor or river bed.
Similar phenomena occur in invertebrates. For example, adult echinoderms have a benthic lifestyle and radial symmetry – as seen in five-armed starfish – but their larvae are bilaterally symmetrical, free-swimming plankton.
What happens in insects?
This story is from the November 2024 edition of BBC Wildlife.
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