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.

Challenge, Least concern, Animal behavior, Community ecology, Infectious disease, Population ecology, Ornithology, Bio/eco-informatics, Ecological modeling, Animal welfare science, United Kingdom, Birds, 2023, Not published Wild Animal Initiative Challenge, Least concern, Animal behavior, Community ecology, Infectious disease, Population ecology, Ornithology, Bio/eco-informatics, Ecological modeling, Animal welfare science, United Kingdom, Birds, 2023, Not published Wild Animal Initiative

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.

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