Sex life of toxic sea slug a million dollar question for science

The sex life of toxic sea slugs is under the microscope. Photo / Supplied

The sex life of sea slugs is under the microscope with three projects investigating how a deadly toxin turned up on Auckland beaches.

More than $1 million is going into the studies, due to be published next summer.

Nelson's Cawthron Institute discovered tetrodotoxin in sea slugs last year after five dogs died from eating them.

Cawthron is trying to unravel the mysteries of how the sea slugs came to be toxic.

Massey University evolutionary geneticist Professor Paul Rainey is heading a study into how sea slugs breed.

The $250,000 three-year project is funded by the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution.

Boosted by winning a Marsden fund grant of $750,000, Cawthron and professor Craig Cary of Waikato University are working off three theories - sea slugs harbour toxin-producing bacteria in a mutually beneficial relationship, sea slugs accumulate the bacteria from the environment or sea slugs make the toxin.

In another $250,000 study, funded by the Nga pae o te Maramatanga Centre of Research Excellence, Cawthron is working with the Hauraki Maori Trust Board to see if there is a health risk in Hauraki Gulf seafood.