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, 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.
Towards welfare-centered prescribed fire
Grantee: Dale Nimmo
Institution: Charles Sturt University, Australia
Project summary
This project will investigate how prescribed burning affects wild animal welfare, and whether welfare state helps determine survival and harm suffered. The team will study bush rats (Rattus fuscipes) in forest blocks scheduled for prescribed burns and in control sites, combining behavioral, body-condition, injury, and non-invasive physiological measures to infer welfare changes. Lightweight telemetry will enable tracking of survival and severe harm, while fire-severity mapping, refuge measurements, and camera traps will help identify the mechanisms involved. The goal is to generate evidence to help burns be planned and implemented in ways that reduce avoidable suffering.
Environmental drivers of welfare in urban rats: A multimodal field study of micro-habitat conditions and affective behavior
Grantee: Emily Mackevicius
Institution: Basis Research Institute, United States
Project summary
This project will investigate how urban micro-habitat conditions shape the affective and social lives of brown rats (Rattus norvegicus). Better tools for understanding rat behavior could support both wild animal welfare science and integrative management practices. The project will first test whether indicators developed in laboratory rodents such as ultrasonic vocalizations, posture, movement, social behavior, and surface temperature can be used to infer affective state and social experience in urban field settings. The team will then model how environmental features predict these indicators, with the goal of identifying urban conditions associated with positive or negative experiences.
Feeling salty: A welfare framework for estuarine fishes
Grantee: Samantha Levell
Institution: New College of Florida, United States
Project summary
Estuaries are highly dynamic environments in which salinity can change rapidly. This project will study how short-term, ecologically realistic salinity shifts influence welfare in estuarine fishes using non-invasive measures such as waterborne cortisol, metabolic rate, exploration, shoaling behavior, and decision making. The project will focus on two common estuarine species: the sheepshead minnow (Cyprinodon variegatus) and the sailfin molly (Poecilia latipinna). By comparing juveniles and adults, the project aims to develop practical tools for assessing fish welfare in the wild and to better understand how environmental variability shapes the experiences of aquatic animals.
Comparative assessment of capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) welfare in protected, semi-anthropized, and anthropized environments in Argentina
Grantee: Débora Silvia Racciatti
Institution: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Project summary
This project will assess how different levels of human disturbance are associated with behavioral, physiological, and health-related welfare indicators in capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris). Using camera traps, direct observations, non-invasive fecal sampling, and body condition assessments, the team will evaluate a suite of indicators and test not only whether they vary in predicted directions across environments, but how consistently they converge across welfare domains, identifying which measures most reliably discriminate conditions of higher versus lower welfare in free-ranging populations.
Validating behavioral, acoustic, and physiological indicators of welfare in urban birds
Grantee: Miriam Soledad Vazquez
Institution: Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina
Project summary
This project will evaluate whether behavioral, acoustic, and physiological indicators consistently reflect welfare-relevant experiences in two urban thrush species. Welfare will be assessed by combining focal behavioral observations (vigilance, aggression, displacement, foraging activity, and tolerance of conspecifics and heterospecifics), passive acoustic monitoring (focal activity rates and calling patterns), and feather glucocorticoid analyses across urban sites that differ in vegetation cover and human disturbance. These indicators will be interpreted together to evaluate whether they show concordant, biologically meaningful responses across urban environments, while recognizing that different indicators may capture different temporal or contextual dimensions of affective state and welfare.
Assessing behavioral and physiological welfare indicators for the Kashmir loach (Triplophysa kashmirensis)
Grantee: Misba Rehman
Institution: Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, India
Project summary
This project aims to develop and validate non-invasive behavioral and physiological welfare indicators for the Kashmir loach (Triplophysa kashmirensis). The researchers will use underwater cameras to record behaviors like activity, refuge use, foraging, and abnormal swimming patterns. Physiological welfare will be assessed using mucus sampling to measure cortisol concentrations and supplementary indicators including oxidative stress and immune markers. The team will validate indicators by testing their correlation with key water quality parameters. The project aims to establish the first field-based welfare assessment framework for this species and develop a transferable model for wild freshwater fishes inhabiting mountain stream ecosystems.
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.
Does DNA methylation reflect environmental and social adversity?
Grantee: Daniel T. Blumstein
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Project summary
This project will investigate the welfare effects of early cumulative adversity in free-living yellow-bellied marmots. It will look for associations between the adversity index and behaviors that indicate general wariness (flight initiation distance, time allocated to vigilance while foraging, the propensity to emit alarm calls while foraging); biomarkers that indicate physiological stress (fecal glucocorticoid levels, neutrophil:lymphocyte ratios); and two measures of aging (telomere length and DNA methylation). By quantifying these behavioral indices of wariness and the suite of biomarkers that culminate in telomeres and epigenetic state in pups throughout their first year and in older animals throughout their lives, the project will determine whether adverse environmental experiences have immediate and lasting effects on welfare.