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 will be adding more in the coming weeks and months.
How do human activities impair the welfare of highly social fish?
Grantee: Joachim Frommen
Institutions: 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.
Grantee: Joachim Frommen
Institutions: Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $28,960
Grant type: Seed grants
Focal species: The princess of Zambia (Neolamprologus pulcher)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Ichthyology, physiology, genetics/genomics
Research location: United Kingdom, Zambia
Project summary
This project will investigate the welfare of a common fish species in Lake Tanganyika, the princess cichlid (Neolamprologus pulcher), 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 specific environmental characteristics, including boat noise, water visibility (sedimentary and algal load), human fishing intensity, temperature stress, and structural complexity of the local environment.
Why we funded this project
By focusing on an established model system (cichlids), this project is able to benefit from background knowledge of the species’ ecology and behavior and proceed to more neglected welfare questions, as well as potentially engaging a ready audience of cichlid researchers. An especially interesting component of this project is its investigation of brain gene expression to potentially better understand how stress physiology relates to an animal’s subjective experience.
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.
Grantee: Dave Daversa
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles, United States
Grant amount: $30,000
Grant type: Small grants
Focal species: Western toad (Anaxyrus boreas)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Physiology, herpetology, animal welfare science, population ecology, genetics/genomics
Research location: United States
Project summary
A major challenge in wild animal welfare science lies in developing composite assays that consider the full breadth of factors collectively shaping the subjective experiences of animals. This project will apply epigenetic tools to develop minimally invasive and aggregate measures of wild animal welfare. Specifically, the researchers aim to demonstrate proof of concept for a DNA methylation (DNAm)-based model of wild animal welfare. DNAm joins other measurements such as telomere attrition as a biomarker of biological aging, because DNA becomes methylated as a function of both chronological age (time) and accumulated stress. This project will characterize DNAm in western toads (Anaxyrus boreas) from wild populations in southern California, testing the influence of infection with the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) on DNAm, and its covariance with demographic factors such as age and sex, as well as with body condition, a common metric of physical health in wild animals. Captive-reared toads representing all life stages 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 environmental stress (Bd infection), with accelerated biological aging signaling elevated stress and impaired welfare.
Project objectives
Objective 1: Determine the relationship between DNAm and basic risk factors linked to welfare: chronological age, sex, weight, and infection status.
Objective 2: Determine the effect of environmental stressors on epigenetic age.
Why we funded this project
We funded this project because we are interested in the potential for biological aging biomarkers to be used as very long-term, integrative metrics of animals’ lifetime welfare. DNAm is one such potential biomarker that has received relatively little attention in a welfare context. However, DNAm may potentially be easier to measure than more commonly discussed measures of biological age — or at least, be more familiar for mainstream ecological genetics researchers — because DNA methylation is already of interest for other reasons in biological science. We were particularly enthusiastic about this project because it focuses on a species belonging to a large species complex of amphibians, including both common and threatened species, offering broad transferability and potential impact. Amphibians are also relatively neglected in terms of welfare research. We appreciate that this project aims to establish baseline age-specific differences in biological aging rate in order to then assess age-specific differences attributable to different exposures (i.e., age-specific differences in welfare), which connects to the concept of “welfare expectancy” developed by Wild Animal Initiative researcher Luke Hecht.
Find Dave’s other project, studying western fence lizards, here.
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