This award will support the purchase of reach-in and walk-in environmental chambers that permit programmed control of climatic conditions and of associated monitoring equipment. The units will be shared by five researchers and their students and postdocs. Some of the units will be used for rearing various animal taxa (e.g., cooperative spiders from African tropical rain forests that require moderate temperatures and high humidities, or Mexican free-tailed bats whose nursing-colony maintenance requires temperatures of 120F). Other chambers will be used in experiments (e.g., simulated releases of biologically engineered bacteria in a quasi-natural system, or territory size estimates for genetic studies of the behavior of desert animal species). All of these projects require varying conditions of lighting, temperature and humidity. Additionally, some of the projects require the presentation of stimuli (e.g., odors) under conditions isolated from extraneous stimuli. The equipment to be funded permits the achievement of these necessary conditions.
