It is known that lipids and fatty acids (FA) play an important role in
developing embryos of mollusks (Joseph, 1982). However, few studies
are currently available on this topic for sea slugs (Martínez-Pita et al.,
2006). As most marine invertebrates, sea slugs cannot synthetize
certain FA de novo, which must be derived from their dietary prey or
provided through symbiotic relationshipswithmicroalgae or algal chloroplasts
(Zhukova, 2007). FA profiles on early developing embryos are
primarily regulated by broodstock nutrition and clearly reflect the
pool of fatty acids available for parental diets (Leal et al., 2012d;
Martinez-Pita et al., 2005).