Table 5.1.

Characteristics of larval metamorphosis in different teleost groups

Group	Habitat	Niche shift	Duration	Additional morphological changes*	Species and references
Carp	Freshwater	None	Days–weeks	None	Zebrafish Danio rerio: gross morphology (Parichy, Elizondo, Mills, Gordon, & Engeszer, 2009); fin development (Cubbage & Mabee, 1996; Goldsmith, Iovine, O’Reilly-Pol, & Johnson, 2006); pigmentation (Budi, Patterson, & Parichy, 2011; Parichy & Turner, 2003a); and lateral line (Nuñez et al., 2009; Webb & Shirey, 2003)
Catfish	Freshwater	Pelagic to benthic	Days–weeks	Growth of barbels	Indian catfish Mystus punctatus (Ramanathan, Natarajan, & Sukumran, 1985)
Coral reef fish	Marine	Pelagic to demersal	Hours–weeks	Dramatic adult pigmentation changes in many species	Multiple species (McCormick & Makey, 1997; McCormick, Makey, et al., 2002)
Eels	Catadromous	Marine to freshwater	Months–years	Leptocephalus/glass eel to elver/silver eel transition: Salinity tolerance	American eel Anguilla rostrata otolith morphology (Cieri & McCleave, 2000) Japanese eel Anguilla japonica otolith morphology (Arai, Otake, & Tsukamoto, 1997) Australian shortfin eels Anguilla australis (De Silva, Gunasekera, Gooley, & Ingram, 2001) Multiple species (Raju, 1974)
Flatfish	Marine	Pelagic to benthic	Weeks	Cranial development and eye migration, asymmetrical pigmentation	Atlantic halibut Hippoglossus hippoglossus (Sæle et al., 2004) Japanese flounder Paralichthys olivaceus (Tanaka, Kawai, Seikai, & Burke, 1996) Senegalese sole Solea senegalensis (Fernández-Díaz et al., 2001) Starry flounder Platichthys stellatus (Policansky & Sieswerda, 1979) Summer flounder Paralichthys dentatus (Keefe & Able, 1993; Martinez & Bolker, 2003) Multiple species (Schreiber, 2001)
Gobies	Amphidromous	Marine to freshwater	Days–weeks	Change in mouth position and fin shape	Freshwater goby Sicyopterus lagocephalus (Keith et al., 2008; Taillebois et al., 2011)
Groupers	Marine	Pelagic to benthic	Months	Loss of larval spines, dorsoventral flattening	Spotted grouper Epinephelus tauvina (Hussain & Higuchi, 1980) Leopard grouper Mycteroperca rosacea (Martínez-Lagos & Gracia-López, 2009) Hong Kong grouper Epinephelus akaara (Fukuhara & Fushimi, 1988)
Medaka	Amphidromous	None	Days–weeks	None	Medaka Oryzias latipes (Iwamatsu, 1994)
Sea Breams	Marine	Pelagic to benthic	Months	None	Gilt-head sea bream Sparus saurata (Fukuhara, 1991)
Salmonids	Anadromous	Freshwater to marine	Days–weeks	Parr to smolt transition: Changes in lipid content and salinity tolerance; erythrocyte modifications	Atlantic salmon Salmo salar: Morphology (Dêbowski et al., 1999); physiology (McCormick & Saunders, 1987; Virtanen, 1987) Coho salmon Oncorhynchus kisutch physiology (Sullivan, Dickhoff, Mahnken, & Hersbberger, 1985) Multiple species (McCormick & Saunders, 1987; Woo, Bern, & Nishioka, 1978)
Tilapia	Freshwater	None	Days–weeks	None	Tilapia Oreochromis mossambicus (Ramanathan et al., 1985)
Tuna	Marine	Planktonic to pelagic	Days–weeks	None	Pacific bluefin tuna Thunnus thynnus (Kaji, Tanaka, Takahashi, Oka, & Ishibashi, 1996; Kawakami, Nozaki, Seoka, Kumai, & Ohta, 2008; Miyashita, Sawada, Okada, Murata, & Kumai, 2001; Tanaka, Satoh, Iwahashi, & Yamada, 2006) Yellowfin tuna Thunnus albacares (Kaji et al., 1999)

^*At metamorphosis, all groups acquire adult fins and fin rays, internal organs and sensory systems mature, scales and adult pigment pattern form and body proportions change; additional morphological changes lists specific modifications in addition to these common changes