Complete metamorphosis reorganizes insect anatomy so extensively that larval and adult phenotypes are often treated as developmentally decoupled. This interpretation is useful but incomplete. Adult construction still depends on resources, physiological states, surviving or newly generated tissues, endocrine decisions, and microbial interactions established before or during metamorphosis. We argue that larval history can therefore influence adults without requiring simple preservation of larval structures or persistent exposure to the original environmental factor. Evidence from holometabolous insects indicates several non-equivalent forms of continuity: transfer of energetic reserves, persistence of metabolic or transcriptional states, selective cellular survival and tissue remodeling, endocrine gating of developmental commitments, and taxon-specific microbial or symbiont transmission. Conversely, extensive histolysis, regulatory reprogramming, microbiota turnover, and de novo tissue construction can weaken or erase larval effects. We propose that carry-over across complete metamorphosis should be interpreted as bounded developmental dependence rather than as either developmental continuity or complete reset. This perspective separates persistence of an initiating substrate from persistence of its downstream consequences and generates experimentally distinguishable mechanisms for later testing.
