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.
Comparing the welfare of stocked triploid vs native diploid rainbow trout in California
Grantee: Andrew Sharo
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Project summary
Rainbow trout are commonly stocked for recreational fishing throughout the world, but because of their negative impacts on the environment, many state agencies now stock triploid rainbow trout, which are sterile. However, triploid rainbow trout are known to be more sensitive to water temperature and dissolved oxygen, which may impact their welfare in wild environments. This project will use a combination of physiological and behavioral indicators to compare the welfare of diploid and triploid rainbow trout. We will assess the welfare of rainbow trout in ponds across the Los Angeles metropolitan region using qualitative behavioral assessment, neutrophil:lymphocyte ratio, body condition, injury/disease presence, and the expression of stressor-related genes, either non-invasively or through sampling fish caught by recreational anglers.
Does diet mediate effects of sublethal parasitic infections on host welfare?
Grantee: Amanda Koltz
Institution: University of Texas at Austin
Project summary
This project will test how infection by parasitic worms (helminths) influences host welfare in white-footed deer mice by evaluating the relationship between parasite burden and host body condition, microbiome, and stress physiology, as well as behaviors associated with anxiety (negative welfare) and exploration (positive welfare). The researchers will experimentally manipulate parasite burden by intervening to apply anti-parasitic medication (Ivermectin) as a treatment for some mice who were already infected with helminths.
Integrating behavioral competency and post-release support for reintroduced wildlife: a shift in paradigm for rehabilitation and beyond
Grantee: Karli Rice Chudeau
Institution: The Marine Mammal Center, University of California, Davis
Project summary
This project investigates post-release support and monitoring to improve outcomes for rehabilitated juvenile pinnipeds. Post-release support will include familiar cognitive enrichment to help released animals adjust gradually and buffer their affective state. Post-release monitoring will consider metrics such as behavioral diversity, energy expenditure, and body condition, and the animals’ specific behavioral profiles will be compared with those recorded from healthy, wild individuals. These metrics will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of post-release enrichment as an intervention for improving welfare outcomes. Cognitive bias tests for affective state carried out during rehabilitation and prior to release will also be considered as potential predictors of post-release welfare.
Integrating nonlethal field and lab assessments of wild fish welfare in the Colorado River in Grand Canyon
Grantee: Isaac Schuman
Institution: Oregon State University
Project summary
This project will monitor the welfare of three species of fish in the Grand Canyon using a battery of metrics including body condition, gut microbiome, parasite load, and cortisol in skin mucus. The researchers will attempt to validate these as welfare indicators by testing whether they correlate with one another within individual fish, and whether they follow consistent patterns across the three focal species. Finally, they will use long-term population monitoring data to investigate potential correlations between these individual-based welfare indicators and environmental and demographic characteristics of individual study sites, such as food availability and age structure.
Are populations that are well-adapted to their environment less stressed than those that are not?
Grantee: Ryan S. Mohammed
Institution: Auburn University
Project summary
In this pilot study, wild-caught guppies will be exposed to an apparent threat of predation as researchers transfer water from a tank containing a common predator (pike cichlid) into their tank. The amount of water transferred from the predators’ tank will be varied to simulate a range of predator densities. Cortisol levels will then be measured in the guppies’ tissue and tank water. These tissue and water cortisol measurements will be compared to develop a protocol for inferring the cortisol levels of fish based on non-invasive water measurements. The researchers hypothesize that the strength of the guppies’ physiological stress response (cortisol) will vary with apparent predation risk.
Street smarts and bold behaviors: How humans and urban environments influence the welfare of wild mesocarnivores
Grantee: Lauren Stanton
Institution: University of California, Berkeley
Project summary
This project will evaluate the welfare impacts of urban landscapes and human-wildlife conflict scenarios, focusing on environmental contamination and anthropogenic disturbance by assessing how they introduce poor diet and diseases that impact wild animals’ health and behavior, potentially increasing the likelihood of further conflict. It will use motion-activated infrared trail cameras, a novel method, to noninvasively assess and compare the behavior, cognition, and health of urban wildlife in relation to differences in environmental conditions, establishing an individual-based assessment of welfare. The project will also provide a welfare vulnerability assessment in relation to environmental characteristics, which will facilitate modeling and predicting welfare risk according to environmental variables, as well as identifying mitigation opportunities for reducing poor-welfare urban environments.
Identifying species traits underlying conservation translocation failure, to understand risk factors, help redesign procedures, and pre-emptively protect vulnerable wild animals
Grantee: Emma Mellor
Institution: University of Bristol
Project summary
This project uses survival as a welfare indicator in relation to life history characteristics using a database of animal translocations. Traits significantly relating to successful translocation (as indicated by post-release survival) will be identified as risk or protective factors for a variety of animals. The project aims to enable inferences about welfare risk factors for species beyond the datasets available by integrating a phylogenetic approach to understanding welfare. It could therefore provide insights into susceptibility or life history characteristics that provide greater resilience to welfare harms and thus help characterize and prioritize sources of welfare concern in the wild.
Evaluating wild animal welfare in landscapes of fear at urban-wildland interfaces
Grantee: Dave Daversa
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Project summary
This project will investigate the lifetime welfare impacts of landscapes of fear, examining how they vary with respect to an animal’s life history strategy and exploring potential indirect, interactive system-level effects. The study will combine multiple lines of evidence of welfare (behavioral, hormonal, and epigenetic). In particular, it will use DNA methylation to understand the aging and health of individual animals, validating its potential to record cumulative stress over an animal’s lifetime. It will assess the components of the landscape leading to a fear response and resultant difference in welfare, and contribute to our understanding of how variation in life history strategies differentially interact with long-term welfare.
Determination of Fecal Tri-iodothyronine and Cortisol as Physiological Proxies of Animal Welfare
Grantees: Michael Cherry, Joe Hediger
Institutions: Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute, Texas A&M University, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Project summary
Wild animals are susceptible to the effects of thermal stress imposed by a warming climate, including increased energetic costs to maintain a healthy body temperature, immune system impairment, changes in food availability, and increases in disease transmission. White-tailed deer in southern Texas are on the front lines of this challenge. This project aims to assess the reliability of fecal tri-iodothyronine (T3) and fecal glucocorticoids (FGC) as non-invasive physiological metrics for monitoring their health. The use of T3 as an indicator of wildlife health and welfare is relatively novel, and the researchers will attempt to refine it through controlled experiments, correlating the T3 measurements with a more widely used indicator in FGC. Both physiological indicators will be validated against behavioral observations.
Novel epigenetic approaches to measure wild animal welfare and stress
Grantee: Dave Daversa
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Project summary
A challenge in wild animal welfare science is developing composite assays that consider the full breadth of factors collectively shaping subjective experiences. This project will demonstrate proof of concept for a DNA methylation (DNAm)-based model of wild animal welfare, characterizing DNAm in western toads. It will test the influence of infection with Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) on DNAm and its covariance with demographic factors such as age, sex, and body condition. Captive-reared toads will be sampled to characterize DNAm under controlled conditions, providing a standardized profile of DNAm rates over toad life stages. The researchers will then sample toads from wild populations experiencing starkly different levels of Bd infection, with accelerated biological aging signaling elevated stress and impaired welfare.