O'Connor Michael, Sadler Daniel E, Brunner Franziska S, Reynolds Alan, White Nicola, Price Stephen, Plaistow Stewart J
Institute of Infection Veterinary & Ecological Sciences The University of Liverpool Liverpool UK.
Ecol Evol. 2021 Nov 26;11(23):16927-16935. doi: 10.1002/ece3.8326. eCollection 2021 Dec.
Life-history studies are often conducted in a laboratory environment where it is easy to assay individual animals. However, factors such as temperature, photoperiod, and nutrition vary greatly between laboratory and field environments, making it difficult to compare results. Consequently, there is a need to study individual life histories in the field, but this is currently difficult in systems such as where it is not possible to mark and track individual animals. Here, we present a proof of principle study showing that field cages are a reliable method for collecting individual-level life-history data in . As a first step, we compared the life history of paired animals reared outside and inside cages to test the hypothesis that cages allow free flow of algal food resources. We then used a seminatural mesocosm setting to compare the performance of individual field cages versus glass jars refilled with mesocosm water each day. We found that cages did not inhibit food flow and that differences in life histories between three clones detected in the jar assays were also detectable using the much less labor-intensive field cages. We conclude that field cages are a feasible approach for collecting individual-level life-history data in systems such as where individual animals cannot be marked and tracked.
生活史研究通常在实验室环境中进行，在这种环境下很容易对单个动物进行测定。然而，温度、光周期和营养等因素在实验室和野外环境之间差异很大，这使得比较结果变得困难。因此，有必要在野外研究个体生活史，但目前在诸如无法标记和追踪个体动物的系统中，这很难做到。在此，我们展示了一项原理验证研究，表明野外笼子是在[具体系统名称未给出]中收集个体水平生活史数据的可靠方法。第一步，我们比较了在笼子内外饲养的配对动物的生活史，以检验笼子允许藻类食物资源自由流动的假设。然后，我们使用半自然的中宇宙环境来比较单个野外笼子与每天用中宇宙水重新填充的玻璃罐的性能。我们发现笼子不会抑制食物流动，并且在玻璃罐试验中检测到的三个克隆之间生活史的差异，使用劳动强度小得多的野外笼子也能检测到。我们得出结论，对于像[具体系统名称未给出]这样无法标记和追踪个体动物的系统，野外笼子是收集个体水平生活史数据的一种可行方法。
