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.
Developing, testing and validating indicators of wild insect welfare
Grantee: Carl Soulsbury
Institution: University of Lincoln, United Kingdom
Project summary
This project aims to develop and validate practical indicators of welfare in wild insects. Working with three common model species — Dubia cockroaches (Blaptica dubia), two-spotted crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus), and carrion beetles — it will measure a suite of behavioral and physiological stress responses including oxidative stress markers, fat reserves via NMR, and movement patterns tracked using AI-assisted video analysis. These measures will be validated against cognitive bias testing to identify which indicators reliably reflect negative welfare. The most field-accessible measures will be applied to wild carrion beetle populations, testing whether lab-derived welfare indicators hold up under natural conditions.
Grantee: Carl Soulsbury
Institution: University of Lincoln, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $92,148
Grant type: Challenge grants
Focal species: Carrion beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) and others
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Entomology, physiology, animal behavior, cognition
Research location: United Kingdom
Project summary
This project aims to develop and validate practical indicators of welfare in wild insects. Working with three common model species — Dubia cockroaches (Blaptica dubia), two-spotted crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus), and carrion beetles — it will measure a suite of behavioral and physiological stress responses including oxidative stress markers, fat reserves via NMR, and movement patterns tracked using AI-assisted video analysis. These measures will be validated against cognitive bias testing to identify which indicators reliably reflect negative welfare, and the most field-accessible measures will be applied to wild carrion beetle populations, testing whether lab-derived welfare indicators hold up under natural conditions. The goal is a generalizable welfare assessment toolkit that researchers can use across insect taxa in both captive and wild settings.
Why we funded this project
This project provides the first systematic, cross-taxa proof of concept for measuring welfare in wild insects, moving beyond the captive-only focus that has dominated invertebrate welfare research to date. Invertebrates make up the vast majority of animal life on Earth, yet almost nothing is known about their welfare in the wild, so the knowledge generated by this project has the potential to facilitate large-scale impact. Funding this project also deepens our work with an existing grantee.
Find Carl’s other project, studying red foxes and Eurasian hedgehogs, here.
Decoding aquatic mollusk welfare: an investigation of potential physiological and cognitive indicators
Grantee: Laura Webb
Institution: Wageningen University, Netherlnads
Project summary
This project aims to explore physiological and cognitive indicators of welfare in two species of aquatic mollusk: highly mobile cuttlefish (dwarf cuttlefish; Ascarosepion bandense) and sessile (blue) mussels (Mytilus edulis). Valid indicators of mollusk welfare can help us better understand their welfare in changing environmental conditions, such as those associated with climate change. The researchers will explore heart rate variability and respiratory variability as possible physiological indicators, and optimism in a judgment bias test as a cognitive indicator of welfare. Following this, successful metrics can in turn be used to explore the impact of environmental changes on these species' welfare.
Grantee: Laura Webb
Institution: Wageningen University, Netherlands
Grant amount: $10,000
Grant type: Seed grants
Focal species: Bobtail squid (Euprymna berryi), dwarf cuttlefish (Ascarosepion bandense), blue mussel (Mytilus edulis)
Conservation status: Not evaluated
Disciplines: Malacology, cognition, physiology
Research location: Netherlands
Project summary
This project aims to explore physiological and cognitive indicators of welfare in two species of aquatic mollusk: highly mobile cuttlefish (dwarf cuttlefish; Ascarosepion bandense) and sessile (blue) mussels (Mytilus edulis). Valid indicators of mollusk welfare can help us better understand their welfare in changing environmental conditions, such as those associated with climate change. The researchers will explore heart rate variability (mussels) and respiratory variability as possible physiological indicators, and optimism in a judgment bias test as a cognitive indicator of welfare (cuttlefish). Following this, successful metrics can in turn be used to explore the impact of environmental changes on these species' welfare.
Why we funded this project
This project is highly innovative and exploratory in nature, focused on neglected species in welfare research, with sentience accepted for cuttlefish in EU law but not yet for mussels. This work will raise attention to the topic of aquatic mollusk welfare and possible assessment methods in these species.
Harnessing machine learning for the non-invasive assessment of wild fish welfare
Grantee: Thomas Pike
Institution: University of Lincoln
Project summary
This project aims to develop an open-source aquatic camera system capable of automatically and non-invasively quantifying a suite of behavioural and cognitive welfare indicators in wild fish. Behavioural indicators include the degree of physical closeness between individuals within a group, the spatial arrangement of subgroups, movement behaviour, and agonistic interactions. The project will examine variation in these indicators along an urban–rural gradient to a range of putative stressors, before validating them using “challenge” tests involving ecologically relevant experimental interventions (e.g., acoustic disturbances such as boat noise). The overarching objective is to develop an open-source toolkit that integrates commercially available hardware with custom-designed software, allowing the methods to be readily used by others to assess wild fish welfare.
Grantee: Thomas Pike
Institution: University of Lincoln, UK
Grant amount: $81,927
Grant type: Challenge grants
Focal species: Fish
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Animal behavior, cognition, climate science, ichthyology
Research locations: United Kingdom
Project summary
Wild fish are facing unprecedented challenges from climate-change-induced alterations to natural environments and anthropogenic stressors. Yet assessing their welfare is extremely challenging. To address this, this project aims to develop an open-source aquatic camera system capable of automatically and non-invasively quantifying a suite of behavioural and cognitive welfare indicators. Behavioural indicators include the degree of physical closeness between individuals within a group, the spatial arrangement of subgroups, movement behaviour, and agonistic interactions. The project will examine variation in these indicators along an urban–rural gradient to a range of putative stressors, before validating them using “challenge” tests involving ecologically relevant experimental interventions (e.g., acoustic disturbances such as boat noise). The overarching objective is to develop an open-source toolkit that integrates commercially available hardware with custom-designed software, allowing the methods to be readily used by others to easily, cheaply, and repeatedly assess the welfare of wild fish.
Why we funded this project
This project will provide proof of concept for a novel approach to monitoring fish welfare at scale that is designed to be widely generalisable and translatable across species, habitats, and contexts. This project will improve current strategies for assessing the welfare of wild fish, most notably by avoiding the need for capture, handling, or restraint, and by being entirely non-invasive and non-disruptive.
Effect of an invasive competitor on the welfare of a threatened fish in a soft-release program
Grantee: Rafael Freire
Institutions: Charles Sturt University
Project summary
Invasive fish are common in most freshwater systems, yet their impact on the welfare of resident fish is often ignored. Invasive fish species compete and displace small-bodied native fish in several ways, including by preventing access to refuge sites, preferred foods, breeding grounds, and other important resources. This project will assess the welfare of native fish placed in sites with and without invasive competitors. Welfare will be measured using a novel population-level judgement bias test, differences in telomere attrition, and typical physical correlates of welfare in fish. In addition to revealing the impact of invasive fish on small-bodied fish welfare, this work will also promote greater consideration of the impact of animal translocation and release activities on wild animal welfare.
Grantee: Rafael Freire
Institution: Charles Sturt University, Australia
Grant amount: $20,200
Grant type: Discovery grants
Focal species: Southern pygmy perch (Nannoperca australis)
Conservation status: Endangered
Disciplines: Physiology, animal behavior, ichthyology, cognition
Research locations: Australia
Project summary
Invasive fish are common in most freshwater systems, yet their impact on the welfare of resident fish is often ignored. Invasive fish species compete and displace small-bodied native fish in several ways, including by preventing access to refuge sites, preferred foods, breeding grounds, and other important resources. This project will assess the welfare of native fish placed in sites with and without invasive competitors. Welfare will be measured using a novel population-level judgement bias test developed in 2023 with prior Wild Animal Initiative support. Additional measures of welfare will include differences in telomere attrition and typical physical correlates of welfare in fish. In addition to revealing the impact of invasive fish on small-bodied fish welfare, this work will also promote greater consideration of the impact of animal translocation and release activities on wild animal welfare.
Why we funded this project
This project builds on previous work funded by WAI and has immediate potential to inform freshwater systems restoration strategies with a welfare perspective. We are also pleased to see high-quality and scalable behavioral welfare indicators being developed for fish, a group whose welfare has historically been neglected and especially challenging to study.