On a recent trip to Toronto, eminent bee-man and pollination biologist James Thomson showed me his lab, including a cage used for bee pollination studies. The cardboard box is a “box of bees” that can be bought commercially and the experiment involves training bees to go to containers with different colors. Despite being fascinated by the research, my mind couldn’t help but wandering to thinking about how useful such a contraption could be to set up in the field for ecological or behavioral anole studies. As you can see, the cage is big enough that it could house a number of anoles at natural densities, and the mesh lets sunlight and rain through. James kindly informed me that the cages can be purchased at Bioquip; the largest they stock is 6′ (h) x 6′ (w) x 12′ (l), but James told me that larger models can be custom-ordered, and that they are very hardy in the field. Someone should try this!
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Yoel Stuart
Interesting. Perhaps with a little more work, you could sew two together to get extra height.
Paul Klawinski
Chelse Prather used these in an experiment on walking sticks at the El Verde Field Station and they worked fine in a oretty challenging environment. She is currently a postdoc at the University of Houston.