The lipid and fatty acid profiles of pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) smolts from rivers be-longing to the White Sea and Barents Sea basins were analyzed. While the general lipid composi-tion of juveniles from the two basins performered notable similarities, statistically significant dif-ferences were found among individuals collected from certain rivers. These differences were asso-ciated with habitat-specific ecological factors, including water temperature, trophic conditions, and hydrological regimes. Critical adaptive mechanisms at the level of fatty acid composition, re-flecting the transition of smolts to marine environments, were detected. The results emphasize the pivotal role of lipids and their fatty acid constituents as key biochemical markers of adaptation during smoltification, as well as the biochemical heterogeneity in pink salmon smolts at this stage of ontogeny.
Manoilova et al. (Sun,) studied this question.