To be a juvenile and not to be a larva: an attempt to synthesize

Abstract

The question — when does a fish becomes a juvenile — might seem strange to some, and even totally worthless, mainly to those fish and fishery biologists who designate all the small ontogenetic stages of fishes by the banal term ‘fry’ (for a commentary on this unfortunate term, see Balon 1990). Despite this, a group of predominantly younger scientists met at a workshop in Bratislava to exchange views on this topic. Ontogeny is a process during which one event is related to another and everything is related to everything else. Therefore, besides the title subject, the participants of the workshop discussed also such topics as fish metamorphosis, whether the larva period begins with hatching or with the onset of exogenous feeding, and eventually, whether fish ontogeny is saltatory or otherwise.KeywordsLarva PeriodEarly Life HistoryEarly OntogenyExogenous FeedingStone LoachThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.