Types of Insect Rearing Cages
Capturing, holding, rearing, multiplying, and analyzing insects require a comfort and convenient environment where insects move freely, feed on plant material, grow and reproduce. Some require plant material to grow while others can grow on artificial diets. In either case, an ideal insect cage should have following charateristics;
A quality research is defined by reproducibility and repeatability. It can only be possible with a standard quality material that are being employed for research. A dependable insect rearing cage should have following characteristics;
1. moderate weight that permits easy moment in the lab
2. should prevent escape of insects from the cage
3. should prevent infestation of the cage by unwanted insects from outside environment (for this mesh grid size or grid's aparture plays important role)
4. should allow to record scientific observations (easy to see through facility in the cage design will help meeting this requirement like providing front side is the cage with see through material like polyethylene in our cages)
5. shouldn’t have any spaces inside the cage or corners that can helps insects hide thereby influences the recorded observation
6. should be long lasting and durable
Some of the examples of insect rearing cages that may meet above criterion to be one of the best commercially available models for research
The labitems have several models of insect rearing cages with various sizes to meet most of the possible demand in the entomology research. Our cages are made of two types of polystyrene or nylon meshes, i.e., 96x26 or 150x150 mesh. 96x26 mesh defined as number grids per one inch width to one inch height. More number of grids, the thinner will be the hole size thereby suitable to contain smallest insects. The 96x26 mesh has aperture size of 680micro meters or 0.6mm, while 150x150 mesh has aperture size of 150micro meters or 0.15mm. Based on the size of the insect when in crawling and flying condition the size of the mesh should be chosen.
Please read more about variations of our insect rearing cages here
Similarly, cages are in tent shaped are available. These are ideal to rear insects on tall plants. The cons of tents are that stalking is not possible as the case with rectangular or square shaped cages.