The term metamorphosis (Greek metamórphosis; “transformation”) derives from the ancient idea of the transformation of mortals or immortals into animals, plants, or inorganic materials. It became well-known above all through Ovid's Metamorphoses (1st century CE), which preserved for posterity a wealth of Greco-Roman metamorphosis myths. The biological phenomenon of metamorphosis was described by Aristotle and others, and had thus also been known ever since antiquity.

The expression itself, however, was introduced to the field of natural history only in 1590,…