Many marine invertebrates have complex lifecycles, whereby larvae metamorphose into the adult form. To meet the energy demands for metamorphosis, larvae can either feed in the plankton (planktotrophy), use their internal yolk stores (lecithotrophy), or display an intermediate “facultative feeding” mode where larvae that can feed may also exclusively use yolk to metamorphose. What drives evolutionary transitions along this continuum of larval feeding modes is unknown. Here we test the theoretical prediction that poor food environments favour the evolution of a greater degree of facultative feeding using experimentally evolved lineages of an Australian copepod that have been reared under high and low food regimes for >7 years. Larvae derived from these evolutionary lineages were reared under fed and unfed conditions to assess the proportion that metamorphosed in no-food environments (a proxy for facultative feeding) while controlling for larval quality (metamorphosis in fed conditions). While we saw limited evolution in facultative feeding, larvae from low-food lineages were larger in size, had shorter development times and were more resistant to starvation than their high-food counterparts. Larval strategies can thus evolve in response to food regimes, although in subtler ways than predicted by theory.