Meet our grantees
Wild Animal Initiative funds academic research on high-priority questions in wild animal welfare.
The goal of our grants program is to fund research that deepens scientific knowledge of the welfare of wild animals in order to better understand how to improve the welfare of as many wild animals as possible, regardless of what causes the threats to their well-being.
We showcase our grantees and their projects here and continuously update this page as new projects are added.
Acoustic indicators of welfare in neotropical frogs: Calls as early-warning signals of sublethal suffering related to infection and environmental stress
Grantee: Erin Wall
Institution: Wavelength Animal Communication Science and University of Texas at Austin, United States
Project summary
Emerging evidence indicates that frog call characteristics are modulated by environmental and physiological conditions, offering the potential for rapid insights into an individual’s welfare. This project will examine the relationship between environmental conditions, physiology, and behavior to connect indices of welfare to variation in acoustic signals in neotropical frogs in Panama. By linking these measures to natural levels of sublethal infection and variation in environmental conditions, the researchers will aim to identify acoustic signatures of welfare and develop a rapid, non-intrusive welfare detection tool for thousands of species of vocalizing frogs.
Developing loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assays for detecting pathogens in wild animal populations
Grantee: Cameron Semper
Institutions: University of Calgary, University of Lethbridge
Project summary
This project aims to develop Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assays for rapid, in situ detection of representative viral and bacterial pathogens, as well as parasitic worm infections in wild animals. This project will develop two methods for detecting viral and bacterial infections, respectively. The viral test will focus on viruses that have caused epidemics in wild frigatebird and sooty tern populations, while the bacterial test will focus on tick-borne illnesses and parasitic worms which infect deer mice. After developing the LAMP assays, the researchers will validate their potential contribution to monitoring wild animal welfare in a non-invasive manner by using them to test for pathogenic load in fecal samples from deer mice.