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.
The animal welfare of animal warfare: how inter-group interactions affect wild animal wellbeing
Grantee: Dominic Cram
Institution: University of Cambridge
Project summary
This project will investigate the welfare consequences of inter-group conflicts in wild Kalahari meerkats. It will use an established dataset of meerkat behavior, body weight, territory use, and reproduction, covering more than 500 inter-group interactions over 14 years. Identifying the short- and long-term welfare implications of inter-group interactions in meerkats will shed light on similar animal warfare in group-living insects, fish, birds, and mammals. Clarifying the circumstances that lead to the most harmful battles will provide a first step in understanding how their frequency could be reduced, which could limit the suffering they cause and enhance the welfare of group-living wild animals.
The impact of road noise on the welfare of free-living juvenile white-footed mice
Grantee: Michael Sheriff
Institution: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Project summary
This project will examine how road noise impacts the ability of juvenile white-footed mice in Massachusetts to respond to the threat of predation. Preliminary work has shown that experimental manipulation of road noise disrupts the foraging responses of (adult) small mammals to predation risk, possibly by masking their ability to perceive predators’ auditory cues. Perception of predation threat will be experimentally manipulated by auditory playback of owl noises at sites near and far from the highway, paired with controls at the same distances from the highway without auditory playback. Anxiety-related behaviors will be recorded in juveniles in an open field trap, and their feces will be studied to assess physiological stress and nutritional status.
Drivers of welfare in American pikas (Ochotona princeps)
Grantee: Johanna Varner
Institution: Colorado Mesa University
Project summary
Pikas (Ochotona princeps) in alpine habitats have recently faced population losses and range retractions. Declines are most prominent in isolated mountain ranges with limited high-elevation habitat, like the La Sals, where pikas are consequently likely to experience lower welfare. This project will assess the welfare of pikas in the La Sals through patterns of survival, population demographics, physiological stress, body condition, ectoparasite load, and hydration. The researchers will also test hypotheses correlating these indicators to habitat quality, and investigate resource competition between pikas and mountain goats.