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 a consensus profile of wild animal welfare: integrating non-invasive monitoring of the gut microbiome with stress physiology and behavior
Grantee: Sam Sonnega
Institution: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Project summary
This project will characterize the gut microbiome of white-footed mice and investigate its relationship with their stress physiology and behavior. Mice will be trapped and fecal samples collected to measure glucocorticoid concentrations and gut microbiome composition. Concurrently, open-field trials will be conducted to assess individual variation in cognitive bias. Perception of predation risk will also be experimentally manipulated by exposing mice to playbacks of predator noises. By correlating the gut microbiome with behavioral and endocrine metrics, a consensus profile of the mice’s welfare will be developed that reflects the complexity of their responses to environmental perturbations, and how those responses can scale up to population and ecosystem level changes via the demographic effects of stress in a “landscape of fear.”
Assessing the Welfare of Wild Olive Baboons (Papio anubis) at the Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project, Laikipia, Kenya
Grantee: Monica Wakefield
Institution: Northern Kentucky University and Iowa State University
Project summary
This project aims to assess the welfare of wild baboons using a holistic approach. The study takes advantage of almost 40 years of long-term ecological, demographic, health, and behavioral information on >170 individually known baboons, and will examine how various factors such as age, sex, and social rank correlate with individual welfare measures such as incidence of injury and disease, body mass, and pro-social or agonistic behaviors. The annual scale of the dataset will also enable the researchers to test how events such as droughts have affected welfare during specific periods, and how these effects may have varied according to individual animals’ demographic profiles and biographies.
Assessing the anthropogenic impacts, long-term health, and welfare of elasmobranch species within San Francisco Bay, California
Grantee: Meghan Holst
Institution: University of California, Davis
Project summary
The San Francisco Bay Estuary is used by individuals belonging to several elasmobranch populations during critical periods of their life history. But it is also dredged, used as a major harbor for ships, and fished, with sharks and their prey targeted. This project will measure stress physiology and blood contaminants to evaluate whether the health and welfare of elasmobranchs is threatened within San Francisco Bay. It will also use stable isotope analysis to evaluate the dietary needs and sensitivities of San Francisco Bay’s elasmobranch species to determine whether individuals are threatened with hunger due to fishing, and to map relationships within the ecosystem.
Physiological and behavioral effects of nicarbazin on feral urban pigeons (Columba livia)
Grantee: Jessica X. Wright-Lichter
Institution: Tufts University
Project summary
The oral contraceptive Nicarbazin (NCZ) has been shown to be effective in urban pigeons. However, despite evidence that it may limit birds’ ability to cope with high heat, the side-effects of prolonged exposure to NCZ on pigeons have not been studied. In this project, feral pigeons will be treated with NCZ and exposed to increased ambient temperature to assess their responses. Changes in corticosterone levels will be used as a physiological proxy for welfare. The researchers will also look for behavioral correlations by measuring the onset and frequency of heat-mediating behaviors. The behavioral effects of NCZ treatment alone will also be assessed by quantifying impacts on affiliative and aggressive behaviors, social status, and access to feed at bait sites.
It takes guts to grow in the city: the role of the gut microbiome in the welfare of juvenile urban birds
Grantee: Pablo Capilla-Lasheras
Institution: University of Glasgow
Project summary
Approximately 30 million blue tits hatch every year in UK cities, but around 63% die as juveniles. One reason for this may be that juvenile birds in urban habitats tend to have low-quality diets, causing stunted growth and increased early-life mortality. Research suggests that gut microbiome composition may contain indicators of an animal’s welfare, but this has received little attention in a wild animal context. This project will combine telomere attrition, begging behavior, and other health metrics with a study of juvenile birds’ gut microbiomes to investigate how to improve the welfare of juvenile blue tits in urban areas. It will also test the potential for gut microbiome enrichment to improve the life experience of juvenile birds in urban habitats.
Density-dependent welfare in wild bird social networks: Linking resource distributions with disease dynamics
Grantee: Joshua Firth
Institution: University of Oxford
Project summary
This project will investigate how various potential density-dependent drivers of welfare interact and influence net welfare in two species of tit. Population density is expected to be directly related to infectious disease transfer and increased competition, but also to covary with processes that are potentially beneficial to welfare. The study will use historical data to determine how the relationship between population density and individual welfare is shaped by infectious disease, body condition, and mortality risk. The investigators will then manipulate density experimentally to test model outputs and determine potential causal links.