Several reviews and books on fish larvae have been published in the last decade updating our knowledge on classic topics of fish biology translated to the first developmental stages. In these reviews,. different novel aspects of feeding and nutrition, development and growth, health, and rearing methodologies in fish larvae have usually been explained as a short addendum to the detailed description of each whole general topic, remairúng in many cases unnoticed. Nevertheless, by reading recent published scientiific articles it is possible to find out the potential relevance of sorne emerging issues. Most research efforts replicate similar experiments with the same objectiv·es in different species. lt is evident that such research is necessary, but a globa.l comparison to detect potential differences and pattems among species is stilll missing. Nonetheless, it is obvious that those studies exploring new methods ma.ke the results more interesting. The use of genomics and molecular tools has be·en more profusely applied to fish larvae research. Although still with a limited application regarding the number of species, these tools are opening new perspe:ctives in unraveling mechanisms of key developmental and physiological processes. Considerable fundamental research is being done on model species, particularly zebrafish, although mostly with objectives other than the potential appli,cation for aquaculture. The discussion about to what extent model species can Jproperly represent farmed species is still open. Sorne species with aquaculture potential are still underrated from the investigation point of view, while others just started to give results after years of effort, such as sorne large pelagic fish. All these papers provide a large amount of di verse information that is fragmentrury and asymmetric among species, habitats, and geographical regions. Nevertheless, the question is to what extend actual novel research with important new fiindings is currently surfacing with retevanee for a better understanding of larval biology and physiology, as a way for improving rearing technologies.

Trabajo presentado en el 7th Fish & Shellfish Larviculture Symposium (Larvi 2017), celebrado en Gent del 4 al 7 de septiembre de 2017.

Acknowledgements: financed by project RIDIGEST (AGL2011-23722; MINECO; Spain) with FEDER/ERDF contribution.

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