FRAMES

Most marine fishes have a bipartite life cycle in which a dispersive pelagic larval phase is followed by more sedentary juvenile and adult stages in coastal habitats. The transition between these two environments – larval recruitment – is a critical life-history step that generally coincides with metamorphosis, during which larvae undergo major morphological, physiological and behavioural transformations.

Recent work has shown that these transformations are coordinated by endocrine pathways and that disrupting these mechanisms can compromise juvenile performance and recruitment success. Yet this knowledge remains based on only a handful of species, despite the remarkable diversity of recruitment strategies observed among marine fishes. Some species undergo rapid and conspicuous metamorphic changes, whereas others display much more gradual or limited transformations.

FRAMES asks whether this diversity in recruitment and metamorphosis strategies reflects different underlying physiological and endocrine mechanisms, and whether these different strategies also determine how vulnerable species are to environmental change and pollution.