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Researchers have discovered that a Red Drum’s diet affects the metabolism of its offspring by changing the composition of its eggs. Credit: Joan Holt, The University of Texas Marine Science Institute.
For a young redfish, survival may depend on what its mother ate before spawning. If mama didn’t get enough essential fatty acids, then her offspring might not be able to catch food or get away from predators — even if the young consume a lot of fatty acids after they hatch.
This concept is known as metabolic programming. It says that pre-natal nutrition can have an effect on metabolism after birth. In humans, for example, there appears to be a link between a pregnant mother’s diet and a variety of health problems in children, such as diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.
Researchers at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute recently conducted one of the first studies of metabolic programming in fish. They varied the amount of a fatty acid known as DHA in the diets of both adult and recently hatched red drum, a sport fish.
The study showed that when adult females consumed a lot of DHA, their eggs contained a lot of it as well. The study also indicated that larvae hatched from eggs with less DHA weren’t able to use DHA in their own diet. As a result, they were less likely to survive.
Red drum come close to shore to spawn. Their main food source in the bays and estuaries is crabs and shrimp, which are rich in fatty acids. But commercial harvesting or a change in the environment — anything from a hard freeze to an oil spill — could reduce the numbers of both — jeopardizing the survival of new generations of red drum through the hidden effects of metabolic programming.
