published papers listed on the online database Web of Knowledge published
by Thompson Reuters (available at http://apps.webofknowledge.
com, and consulted the 24th of August 2012) were retrieved. The
following search factors were used in the field “topic” as search request
for referenced publications until August 2012: “Opisthobranchia”
(for the general search) and “Opisthobranchia” AND “culture”
(for the restricted search on sea slugs culture). While the term
“Opisthobranchia” is no longer used (changed to Heterobranchia
in 2010; see the Introduction section and Fig. 1), its use allowed
a more complete survey of all previous works published on sea slugs.
The search performed retrieved 948works referring to Opisthobranchia
from 1958 to August 2012. Overall publication activity was characterized
by an increase in the number of published articles per year. Most
articles on this topic have been published only in the last 12 years
(2000–2012) (418 articles, representing 44% of total publications on
this topic) (Fig. 3). Only 30 of the retrieved publications specifically address
the culture of sea slugs. Apart fromrecent efforts targeting culture,
given their importance formainstreamscientific areas such as neurobiology,
sea slug production at a large scale has been poorly investigated.
This trend in publications on sea slug's culture reflects how limited our
scientific knowledge on this topic is and the need for further research to
help our understanding of this important group of organisms.