Fish Shuttlebox System for Behavioural Studies

这两个加拿大研究主席（环境生理学家和行为科学家）的应用程序与密切的合作联系，要求一个独特的计算机控制的梭箱系统，以研究环境的选择在鱼类在真实的时间。 其他四个研究小组也将使用该设备。该设备允许实验动物准确地告诉研究人员在特定时间它喜欢水中的环境参数（盐度，温度，溶解的O2，溶解的CO2或pH值）。 两个模块将允许任何两个参数的同时实验。 在过去，这类信息只能通过梯度系统中繁琐的视觉观察以粗略的方式获得。现在越来越多的人认识到，动物急性暴露于环境挑战（例如低盐度或低氧）会造成不自然的情况，因此观察到的反应也可能是不自然的。在野生环境中，鱼通常有能力选择环境，避免压力源，它所做的选择可能取决于它过去的历史（例如驯化，训练，暴露于有毒物质）和它当前的生理（例如消化食物，禁食，生殖条件，应对另一个压力源）。这个装置将提供这个信息。该系统将用于基础探索研究和（呼吸，代谢，体温调节和离子调节生理学，动物行为），跨学科研究（全球变化和环境管理），并应用战略和CRD研究项目（环境毒理学，水产养殖），并将有助于在两个申请人的实验室培训13名HQP，在接下来的5年里，在其他团队成员的实验室里，

This application by two Canada Research Chairs (an environmental physiologist and a behavioral scientist) with close collaborative links requests a unique computer-controlled shuttle-box system to study environmental choice in fish in real time. Four other research groups will also use the apparatus. The equipment allows the experimental animal to tell the investigator exactly which level of an environmental parameter in the water (salinity, temperature, dissolved O2, dissolved CO2, or pH) it prefers at a particular time. Two modules will allow simultaneous experiments with any two of the parameters. In the past, this sort of information could only be obtained in a crude manner by tedious visual observations in gradient systems. There is now increasing realization that acute exposure of an animal to an environmental challenge (e.g. low high salinity or low O2) imposes an unnatural situation, and therefore the responses observed may be unnatural as well. In the wild, a fish often has the ability to choose its environment, and to avoid a stressor, and the choice it makes may depend on its past history (e.g. acclimation, training, exposure to a toxicant) and its current physiology (e.g. digesting a meal, fasting, reproductive condition, coping with another stressor). This apparatus will provide this information. The systems will be used in both basic Discovery research (respiratory, metabolic, thermoregulatory, and ionoregulatory physiology, animal behavior), interdisciplinary research (global change and environmental management), and applied Strategic and CRD research projects (environmental toxicology, aquaculture), and will contribute to the training of 13 HQP in the labs of the two applicants, and up to 14 more in the labs of other team members, over the next 5 years.