The present study was motivated by an early observation made
for Atlantic halibut larvae fed short-term enriched Artemia and harvested
copepods (Evjemo et al., 2003). It appeared that the halibut
larvae were less capable of incorporating docosahexaenoic acid
(DHA; 22:6 n−3) from Artemia than from copepods into their tissues.
This observation was not understood at that time, but we now
suggest that this was the case, because DHA in enriched rotifers and
Artemia are mainly associated with triacylglycerides (TAG) (Coutteau
and Mourente, 1997; Li et al., 2014). We therefore suggest that early
cod larvae cannot efficiently utilise DHA from digested TAG components
for de novo PL synthesis and that they instead base their PL synthesis
on dietary PL. This probably reflects a limited ability of early
larvae to carry through de novo synthesis of PL based on dietary TAG,
and is in agreement with the finding that PL appears to be essential
for fish larvae in their very earl