The Metamorphosis resulted from Merian's trip, after her mother's death, with her daughter Dorothea to Surinam in 1699. The two women spent two years studying and recording plants and insects, returning to Amsterdam, after contracting malaria, with a series of finished drawings on vellum, sketches, and specimens, from which they continued to work. The first edition of their labours appeared in 1705 in Latin. Later editions contain 12 additional plates by Merian's older daughter Johanna. S. Peter Dance in "The Art of Natural History" (1978), refers to this series as "easily the most magnificent work on insects so far produced... combining science and art in equal proportions...."

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