Animals’ selection of environments within a preferred range is key to understanding their habitat selection, tolerance to stressors and responses to environmental change. For aquatic animals, preferred environmental ranges can be studied in so-called shuttle-boxes, where an animal can choose its ambient environment by shuttling between separate choice chambers with differences in an environmental variable. Over time, researchers have refined the shuttle-box technology and applied them in many different research contexts, and we here review the use of shuttle-boxes as a research tool with aquatic animals over the past 50 years. Most studies on the methodology have been published in the latest decade, probably due to an increasing research interest in the effects of environmental change, which underlines the current popularity of the system. The shuttle-box has been applied to a wide range of research topics with regards to preferred ranges of temperature, CO 2 , salinity and O 2 in a vast diversity of species, showing broad applicability for the system. We have synthesized the current state-of-the-art of the methodology and provided best practice guidelines with regards to setup, data analyses, experimental design and study reporting. We have also identified a series of knowledge gaps, which can and should be addressed in future studies. We conclude with suggesting some obvious directions for research using shuttle-boxes within evolutionary biology and behavioural and physiological ecology.

中文翻译：

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用于研究水生动物偏好环境范围的穿梭箱系统

动物在偏好范围内选择环境是了解其栖息地选择、对压力源的耐受性和对环境变化的反应的关键。对于水生动物，可以在所谓的穿梭箱中研究首选环境范围，其中动物可以通过在环境变量存在差异的单独选择室之间穿梭来选择其周围环境。随着时间的推移，研究人员改进了穿梭箱技术，并将其应用于许多不同的研究环境，我们在此回顾过去 50 年使用穿梭箱作为水生动物研究工具的情况。大多数关于该方法的研究都是在最近十年发表的，可能是由于人们对环境变化影响的研究兴趣日益浓厚，这突显了该系统目前的受欢迎程度。该穿梭箱已应用于多种物种的优选温度、CO 2 、盐度和O 2 范围的广泛研究课题，显示出该系统的广泛适用性。我们综合了当前最先进的方法，并提供了有关设置、数据分析、实验设计和研究报告的最佳实践指南。我们还发现了一系列的知识差距，这些差距可以而且应该在未来的研究中得到解决。最后，我们提出了在进化生物学以及行为和生理生态学中使用穿梭箱进行研究的一些明显的方向。