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.
Are we making urban wildlife sick?
Grantee: Carl Soulsbury
Institution: University of Lincoln
Project summary
The goal of this project is to test whether differences in welfare among individual red foxes and individual European hedgehogs are explained by specific environmental stressors arising from urbanization (e.g., increased human population density, noise pollution, or reduced habitat heterogeneity). Notably, on a population level, foxes appear to have fared well alongside humans, while hedgehogs have struggled to cope with urbanization. The study will confirm whether this contrast is also seen at the level of individual welfare, and offers a unique opportunity to identify common environmental stressors that may be impacting the health and welfare of urban wildlife more generally. To assess welfare, the project will perform cognitive judgment bias and novel object tests and combine them with non-invasive indicators of physiological stress (fecal glucocorticoids and eye/ear temperature) and health (pathogen load).
Developing an automated cognitive bias task for wild squirrels
Grantees: Vikki Neville, Lisa Leaver
Institutions: University of Bristol, University of Exeter
Project summary
The goal of this project is to develop a cognitive judgment bias test for use in wild gray squirrels that capitalizes on their innate behavior, avoiding the need for the extensive type of training that is usually part of cognitive judgment bias tests in captive settings. By making use of the widely available Raspberry Pi platform, the test should be relatively easy for other researchers to replicate and adapt for use in other species. To validate the test itself, the research team will also assess how measurement of cognitive judgment bias varies with factors assumed to affect the valence of animals participating in the test, such as distance from cover and levels of food provisioning in the environment, as well as how the test results correlate with other potential non-invasive behavioral and physiological indicators of welfare, such as the distance at which a squirrel flees from approaching humans, hair cortisol concentration, and real-time fluctuations in eye temperature in response to stimuli during the the test.
Validating the use of cognitive bias to assess affective valence in wild bird populations.
Grantee: Oliver Burman
Institution: University of Lincoln
Project summary
The goal of this project is to develop and validate a cognitive bias test for assessing the welfare of woodland birds that does not require any training stage, and instead takes advantage of innate attraction and aversion to stimuli that resemble preferred or noxious prey (with a range of likeness accuracy, based on the principle of imperfect Batesian mimicry). Continuing the theme of exploiting natural variation, the project will use spatial variation in numerous components of habitat preferability that can be assumed to directionally affect welfare — such as food abundance and shelter — as natural experiments to validate their cognitive bias tests.
Measuring health and frailty in wild insects
Grantee: Jelle Boonekamp
Institutions: University of Glasgow
Project summary
The aim of this project is to develop a non-invasive frailty index that measures the health of individual insects in their natural habitat and can be applied across species. Using traits applicable to many different insect species, it will develop an insect frailty index, validating it against mortality and fitness data in an insect population by testing whether frail individuals have increased mortality risk and reduced fitness. The project will use data from a long-term field study of a natural population of crickets, which recorded adult crickets from their emergence to death using a network of 140 video cameras. Fitness was measured by genotyping and counting the number of surviving genetic descendants in the following year.
Improving the welfare of wild and captive animals with integrated in-situ and ex-situ behavioural monitoring
Grantee: Sarah Richdon
Institution: Bristol Zoological Society
Project summary
This project will investigate the welfare impacts of translocating captive-bred white-clawed crayfish (Austropotamobius pallipes) into an existing wild population. Both resident and introduced individuals will be fitted with transponders and marked for behavioral monitoring. To evaluate welfare, the researchers will observe social interactions (e.g. aggressive interactions), behavioral diversity, and the animals’ use of their habitat. For example, emigration of native individuals from the focal habitat may be indicative of intraspecific competition intensified by the translocation. Body condition will also be scored as a metric of health and resource access.
How do human activities impair the welfare of highly social fish?
Grantee: Joachim Frommen
Institution: Manchester Metropolitan University
Project summary
This project will investigate the welfare of a common fish species in Lake Tanganyika, the princess cichlid, as they are exposed to varying levels of human activity. Across eight populations representing a range of distances to human settlements and shipping routes, the researchers will monitor behaviors indicative of stress or aggression and measure body condition and the brain tissue expression of five genes involved in stress physiology (glucocorticoid response pathway; crf, cyp11b, gr1, gr2, mr). These welfare indicators will be compared with environmental characteristics including boat noise, water visibility (sedimentary and algal load), human fishing intensity, temperature stress, and structural complexity of the local environment.
Predicting density dependence of welfare of wild animal populations based on resource access linked to habitat availability and usage
Grantee: Ross MacLeod
Institution: Liverpool John Moores University
Project summary
This project seeks to adapt a habitat and population model to incorporate welfare and apply it to the study of an abundant and widespread avian species, the house sparrow (Passer domesticus). The researchers propose to utilize a variety of welfare metrics to validate model assumptions, which will then allow them to test assumptions related to the welfare implications of density-dependent population dynamics.
Empirical assessment of welfare in wild American mink and Eurasian otters: the effects of intra- and inter-specific population density
Grantees: Lauren A Harrington, Maria Diez Leon
Institution: Oxford University
Project summary
This project seeks to determine whether the welfare of American mink is negatively impacted in the presence of high densities of Eurasian otters, whether both species’ welfare is compromised at relatively higher densities of conspecifics, and whether there is a seasonality to welfare impacts. The project will also assess whether behavioral time budget shifts in mink are associated with higher chronic stress levels as a proxy for negative impact on mink welfare. These questions will be addressed by measuring welfare through several different domains, including behavioral (exploratory behavior, vocalizations), physical (body condition, ectoparasite load), and physiological (telomere length, fecal glucocorticoid metabolites and hair cortisol) metrics.
Social connections and their welfare implications in the wild
Grantee: Alex Thornton
Institutions: University of Exeter, University of Bristol
Project summary
This project seeks to understand the relationship between welfare and social interactions in wild bird populations. Using historical data, the researchers will also seek insight into how welfare varies among individuals in relation to the social system, early-life experiences, and interactions among individuals. They will also investigate whether social systems might play a role in helping to mitigate some of the negative anthropogenic impacts on welfare.
Validation and efficacy of faecal glucocorticoid metabolites as indicators of animal welfare
Grantee: Miriam Zemanova
Institutions: University of Fribourg, Animalfree Research, Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
Project summary
Fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGM) may be a suitable non-invasive alternative to blood analysis in animal welfare studies. While there have been several reviews of fecal glucocorticoids, no systematic review of their validity as an animal welfare indicator has been done. Through a systematic review process, this project seeks to provide an evidence base for the efficacy of non-invasive measurement of stress levels in wild animals using fecal glucocorticoids. Evidence will be compiled from studies that have assessed the correlation between fecal glucocorticoids and at least one other credible animal welfare indicator or factor that may be assumed to lead to impaired welfare. The project also aims to compare the performances of blood and fecal samples to assess stress levels.