“…The effects of lipid content in aquaculture diets on aquatic animal growth performance are well studied ( (Bromley 1980;Beamish & Medland 1986;Vergara, L opez-Calero, Robaina, Caballero, Montero, Izquierdo & Aksnes 1999;Lee & Kim 2001). Optimization of dietary lipid levels has been found to improve fecundity in cultured fish belonging to diverse taxa, such as green swordtail Xiphophorus helleri Heckel (Ling, Hashim, Kolkovski & Chong 2006), black sea bass Centropristis striata (L.) (Bentley, Watanabe, Rezek & Seaton 2009), Atlantic cod Gadus morhua L. (Grisdale-Helland et al 2008), channel catfish Ictalurus punctatus (Rafinesque) (Sink & Lochmann 2008), yellowfin sea bream Acanthopagrus latus (Houttuyn) (Zakeri, Marammazi, Kochanian, Savari, Yavari & Haghi 2009) and orange-spotted spinefoot Siganus guttatus (Bloch) (Duray, Kohno & Pascual 1994). Various biochemical mechanisms may account for the increased fecundity of fish fed higher lipid level diets including more energy available for spawning, an increase in the abundance of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids for inclusion in vitellogenins, and a higher proportion of essential long-chain unsaturated fatty acids such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in instances where marine oils are used as the lipid component.…”