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.
Validating welfare indicators in an arachnid and their relationship to leg loss, a common defense strategy
Grantee: Ignacio Escalante
Institution: University of Illinois, Chicago
Project summary
This project will explore the welfare implications of leg loss, or “autotomy” — a common defensive strategy among animals. The project aims to validate welfare indicators within an understudied group of invertebrates, the Opiliones (Arachnida) in southwestern Costa Rica. Field and lab experiments will be used to test three potential behavioral welfare indicators: 1) movement patterns (approach vs. retreat), 2) speed, and 3) exploratory leg-tapping behaviors (count of leg taps) in response to positively and negatively valanced stimuli. These behaviors will be assessed when individuals are alone, in conspecific aggregations, and in barren versus complex housing. All experiments will include individuals with all legs and those with missing legs to assess how leg condition impacts welfare.
Grantee: Ignacio Escalante
Institution: University of Illinois, Chicago, US
Grant amount: $29,946
Grant type: Discovery grants
Focal species: Several species of the arachnid order Opiliones in the genus Prionostemma (family Sclerosomatidae)
Conservation status: Not evaluated
Disciplines: Animal behavior, sentience
Research locations: Costa Rica, United States
Project summary
This project will explore the welfare implications of leg loss, or “autotomy” — a common defensive strategy among animals. The project aims to validate welfare indicators within an understudied group of invertebrates, the Opiliones (Arachnida) in southwestern Costa Rica. Field and lab experiments will be used to test three potential behavioral welfare indicators: 1) movement patterns (approach vs. retreat), 2) speed, and 3) exploratory leg-tapping behaviors (count of leg taps) in response to positively and negatively valanced stimuli. These behaviors will be assessed when individuals are alone, in conspecific aggregations, and in barren versus complex housing. All experiments will include individuals with all legs and those with missing legs to assess how leg condition impacts welfare.
Why we funded this project
If validated, these behaviours will provide a novel set of welfare indicators in an arachnid, a group whose welfare has historically been neglected. The researchers’ previous work also shows that autotomy is very common in this taxon, so this project has the potential to help researchers understand the welfare of a very large number of individuals.
A quest for a non-lethal method to assess spiders’ welfare in the urban environment
Grantee: Alessandra Costanzo
Institution: University of Milan
Project summary
This pilot project aims to develop welfare indicators for the orb-weaver spider Araneus angulatus, a species commonly found in urban settings. Juveniles will be exposed to urban stressors such as non-lethal mosquito-repellent pesticides, elevated temperatures simulating the Urban Heat Island effect, and changes in food availability. Once they reach adulthood, the effects of these stressors on individuals will be assessed using physiological (biomarkers of oxidative stress, detoxification, neurotoxicity, and energy metabolism) and morphological (body size, mass, and fluctuating asymmetry) indicators, and behavioral endpoints (prey capture rates and web structure). By integrating these measures, the project aims to triangulate spider welfare across multiple domains and improve our understanding of how urban stressors affect individual well-being.
Grantee: Alessandra Costanzo
Institution: University of Milan, Italy
Grant amount: $27,000
Grant type: Discovery grants
Focal species: Orb-weaver (Araneidae) and long-jawed orb-weaver spiders (Tetragnathidae)
Conservation status: n/a
Disciplines: Physiology, animal behavior
Research locations: Italy
Project summary
Urban areas are the fastest-growing habitat type worldwide, causing significant loss of other types of habitats and biodiversity declines, while also potentially reducing the welfare of some individual animals through sublethal stress. While urban wildlife research has mainly focused on charismatic species like birds and pollinators, less attention has been given to neglected taxa such as spiders. This pilot project aims to develop welfare indicators for the orb-weaver spider Araneus angulatus, a species commonly found in urban settings. Juveniles will be exposed to urban stressors such as non-lethal mosquito-repellent pesticides, elevated temperatures simulating the Urban Heat Island effect, and changes in food availability. Once they reach adulthood, the effects of these stressors on individuals will be assessed using physiological (biomarkers of oxidative stress, detoxification, neurotoxicity, and energy metabolism) and morphological (body size, mass, and fluctuating asymmetry) indicators, and behavioral endpoints (prey capture rates and web structure). By integrating these measures, the project aims to triangulate spider welfare across multiple domains and improve our understanding of how urban stressors affect individual well-being.
Why we funded this project
This project advances wild animal welfare science by introducing a multi-indicator framework for assessing welfare in an arachnid, a taxonomic group largely neglected in welfare research.
Validation of non-invasive measures for life stage in wild octopuses and AI-Assisted Behavioral Analysis
Grantee: Michaella Andrade
Institution: Federal University of ABC
Project summary
This project aims to develop non-invasive methods to assess the life stage and welfare of wild octopuses. The project will develop an AI approach that learns to recognize complex behaviors, such as body patterns and ventilation rates, in video footage. In addition, the project will develop a methodology to automatically measure the life stage of octopuses in videos and non-invasive in situ measurements of the distance between the octopuses’ eyes and eyeballs. The main goal is to correlate these metrics with different behavioral contexts to determine whether they can be used as reliable indicators of the animal’s affective state. In the long term, the project aims to create an automated tool that accelerates and improves behavioral data analysis.
Grantee: Michaella Andrade
Institution: Federal University of ABC, Brazil
Grant amount: $10,000
Grant type: Seed grants
Focal species: Octopuses (Octopus insularis)
Conservation status: Not evaluated
Disciplines: Animal behavior
Research locations: Brazil
Project summary
This project aims to develop non-invasive methods to assess the life stage and welfare of wild octopuses. The project will develop an innovative AI approach that automatically learns to recognize complex behaviors, such as body patterns and ventilation rates, directly from pre-recorded videos in the field. In addition, the project will develop a methodology to automatically measure the life stage of octopuses in pre-recorded videos based on our database and non-invasive in situ measurements of the distance between the octopuses’ eyes and eyeballs. The main goal is to correlate these metrics with different behavioral contexts to determine whether they can be used as reliable indicators of the animal’s affective state. In the long term, the project aims to create an automated tool that accelerates and improves behavioral data analysis, enabling large-scale studies of the welfare of wild octopuses.
Why we funded this project
This project extends a previous WAI-funded project and uses innovative approaches to analyzing behavioral data for welfare assessment.
Field tests of bee welfare
Grantee: Vivek Nityanada
Institution: Newcastle University
Project summary
The goal of this project is to develop a cognitive judgment bias test for wild bees and pilot its use in the field. The project will investigate how bee cognitive biases and reward responses vary with factors expected to cause high or low welfare, such as light and vehicular pollution. The researchers will also develop a “lick-o-meter” for assessing welfare based on individual variation in the bees’ consumption of a sugar-water reward, with the expectation that bees in low-welfare environments will display less enthusiasm for consuming the sugar-water.
Grantee: Vivek Nityananda
Institutions: Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $194,317
Grant type: Challenge grant
Focal species: Buff tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Animal welfare science, entomology, animal behavior
Research location: United Kingdom
Project summary
Studying affective states in animals has been a key component towards assessing their welfare. Most studies that have used this approach have focused on vertebrates. Yet, the rapid decline in insect numbers calls out for novel methods to monitor their welfare and measuring their affective states would be an important approach. A few recent papers have indicated the presence of affective states in insects, especially bees. These papers have used judgement bias tests in laboratory settings. Recent findings using an active choice test in our lab have also shown robust evidence of affective states in bees due to changed expectations of rewards. However, there is no research looking at these states in the wild. To address this gap, this project seeks to develop and validate new tests for bee affective states in the wild and use these to assess the welfare of bees in the field.
This project will assess whether environments predicted to induce poor welfare and negative valence for bees– such as ones with poor nutrition or light pollution- induce changes in predicted markers of poor welfare. We will use performances in judgement bias tests and reduced responses to rewards in the wild as behavioral markers of welfare. We will also measure the role of neuromodulators (dopamine, serotonin) by measuring the differences in their expression, and of genes involved in their synthesis pathways, in the brains of wild bees in different environments. Measuring changes in these three different markers across different low-welfare environments will help validate them as measure of bee welfare and develop novel markers for wild bee welfare. They will thus providing vital tools for further biological and environmental research in a variety of pollinators.
Why we funded this project
We are generally excited to support this project because it focuses on a wild insect. Insects are extremely abundant and their welfare is typically neglected. Validating a cognitive judgment bias test that can be implemented in the field for a wild insect would be a powerful step forward.
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.
Grantee: Jelle Boonekamp
Institutions: University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $63,536
Grant type: Ad hoc
Focal species: Field cricket (Gryllinae)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Physiology, entomology
Research location: United Kingdom
Project summary
From an evolutionary perspective, health and well-being is best expressed in terms of fitness variation, the logic being that animals who are optimally adapted to their local environment should be healthy. Hence, health and fitness are intimately entwined on a conceptual level. Morphological, behavioral, and physiological traits that are predictive of fitness could provide potential biomarkers of health, and such approaches have been developed for many different wild vertebrate species. However, due to their small size and mobility, it has proven exceedingly challenging to follow individual insects longitudinally in the wild, let alone their descendants, to measure individual performance and fitness. Consequently, there is a paucity of literature on wild insect health and well-being.
The aim of this project is to address this knowledge gap by developing a non-invasive frailty index that measures the health of individual insects in their natural habitat and that can be applied across species. Analogizing to frailty indices used in human patients, this project will develop an insect frailty index using relevant traits applicable to many different insect species. In humans, the frailty index is highly predictive of morbidity and remaining life expectancy. Similarly, this project seeks to validate the insect frailty index against mortality and fitness data in an insect population by testing whether “frail” individuals have increased mortality risk and reduced fitness.
This project is made possible by the work that we have done to establish a long-term field study of a natural population of crickets (WildCrickets.org). Using a network of 140 video cameras, all the adults in the population are longitudinally monitored from their emergence in early spring to their natural death in late summer. All their movements, reproductive behaviors, fights, and predation events are recorded, and fitness is measured by genotyping and counting the number of surviving genetic descendants in the next year.
Why we funded this project
Willingness to investigate the welfare of insects is somewhat rare, as are creative ways to assess their welfare. This project both proposed a potentially usable metric, and has access to an unusually useful resource through the WildCrickets.org project. While any particular approach to assessing welfare in insects is unlikely to work, we are hoping to seed enough approaches and strategies that others take up the call, eventually drawing in enough different approaches to produce usable strategies for assessing insect welfare in the wild. Finally, because many of the project resources were already acquired through other sources, we were to fund exclusively the welfare-focused aspects of the project.
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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.
Grantee: Sarah Richdon
Institutions: Bristol Zoological Society, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $30,000
Grant type: Seed grants
Focal species: White clawed crayfish (Austropotamobius pallipes)
Conservation status: Endangered
Disciplines: Animal welfare science, marine biology
Research location: United Kingdom
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.
Why we funded this project
We are excited to fund a project focused on the welfare of invertebrates, in this case an aquatic crustacean. The monitoring methods and some findings of this project may also be applicable to other aquatic taxa. Translocation is already a commonly used intervention in conservation, yet its welfare implications are poorly understood. By learning about these, translocation strategies could potentially be improved, and we might gain insights that could be applied to other welfare-motivated interventions.
Development of octopus mind in the wild: a behavioral, ecological and evolutionary investigation into sentience and emotional states in Octopus insularis juveniles
Grantee: Michaella Andrade
Institution: Federal University of ABC
Project summary
There is evidence that evolutionary pressures can cause behaviors with opposite meanings to develop opposite forms, the way a frown is the opposite of a smile. One way to understand the expression of emotion in animals may therefore be to identify pairs of behaviors that are opposites. In octopuses, which are increasingly being recognized as sentient, colors can be signals of emotional valence during conflict and other situations. Yet no study has tested whether octopuses have opposite pairs of color signals. This project will produce descriptions of evolutionary and behavioral patterns that reflect the emotional states and sentience of juvenile octopuses, which may contribute to the welfare of octopuses and other invertebrates.
Grantee: Michaella Andrade
Institution: Federal University of ABC, Brazil
Grant amount: $37,959
Grant type: Challenge grants
Focal species: Octopuses (Octopoda sp.)
Conservation status: Data deficient
Disciplines: Sentience, animal behavior
Research location: Brazil
Publications
Andrade M.P., et al. (2023). Assessing Negative Welfare Measures for Wild Invertebrates: The Case for Octopuses. Animals, 13(19), 3021. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13193021
Project summary
Welfare refers to the quality of life of animals that possess sentient capacity and emotional states. Although the precursors of sentience were possibly present on the planet as early as 890 million years ago, the evolution of sentience is still poorly understood. However, cephalopods are increasingly being recognized as sentient, yet we do not know about this phenomenon in juvenile wild animals. In this sense, studies with wild animals can be beneficial for finding a wider range of ecological triggers and their relationship with behaviors.
There’s evidence that evolutionary pressures can cause behaviors with opposite meanings to eventually develop opposite forms, the way a frown is the opposite of a smile. One way to understand the expression of emotion in animals therefore may be to find pairs of behaviors that are opposites. In octopus, colors can be a signal of emotional valence during conflict and other contexts. Although researchers began to see this dimension in octopuses, no study has tested whether opposite pairs of color signals are present in octopuses. This project will produce descriptions of evolutionary and behavioral patterns that reflect the emotional states and sentience for juvenile octopuses, which may contribute to the welfare of octopuses and other invertebrates.
Why we funded this project
Although octopuses are widely assumed to be sentient at the adult stage, no studies that we are aware of have examined sentience at earlier life stages. As the vast majority of octopuses alive at any one time are juveniles, and octopuses have enormously high juvenile mortality, the question of when in their development sentience arises is particularly important. This project is also interesting because it will teach us about what the lives of juvenile octopuses are like and the extent to which welfare effects are mediated by personality traits.
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Improving the welfare of farmland invertebrates
Grantee: Dr. Ruth Feber
Institution: University of Oxford
Project summary
In Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), larvae are much more abundant and less mobile than adults. Larvae are therefore particularly vulnerable to negative stimuli, including starvation and disease. This project will use lepidopteran larvae as a model for auditing the welfare impact of agricultural activities on invertebrates. Juvenile stages of Lepidoptera are exposed to agricultural practices that have the potential to affect their welfare. To quantify these impacts, the study will extend the Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) methodology to take into account the number of individuals affected by a specified action.
Grantee: Dr. Ruth Feber
Institution: Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Recanati-Kaplan Centre, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $58,448
Grant type: Challenge grant
Focal species: Butterflies (Rhopalocera sp.)
Conservation status: Near threatened
Disciplines: Entomology, population ecology, physiology
Research location: United Kingdom
Project summary
Invertebrates, particularly insects, often have complex life histories. Juveniles (which make up the overwhelming majority of invertebrate numbers) may experience a range of different life quality outcomes. In Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), for example, adults are the most visible stage, but the much more abundant larvae are less mobile than adults and are particularly vulnerable to negative stimuli including starvation and disease.
This project will use lepidopteran larvae as a model for auditing the welfare impact of agricultural activities on invertebrates. Juvenile stages of Lepidoptera tend to comprise the largest proportion of the total lifespan in temperate regions and, as juveniles, they are exposed to a wide range of agricultural practices that have the potential to affect their welfare. Lepidoptera are also among the better-studied invertebrates, with published data on the ecology, life histories, and survivorship of some species. This knowledge will be used to help inform welfare impact assessments.
The study will adapt the Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) methodology to quantify the welfare impacts of agriculture, which has recently been adapted by Teng et al. (2018) to compare the impact of diseases of domestic animals with a Welfare Adjusted Life Year (WALY). This project aims to extend the QALY to take into account the number of individuals affected by a specified action.
Why we funded this project
Farms take up nearly half of the world’s habitable land, but there is a lack of research into how agricultural management practices might impact wild animals, especially invertebrates. In order to improve welfare for invertebrates, we first need to understand how to measure welfare. This project will explore a model to quantify wild insect health and well-being. We were especially attracted to this project because it will repurpose existing data, allowing the research objectives to be accomplished more cheaply and with less animal suffering than might otherwise be required. We were also excited by the PI’s interest in quantifying welfare using a QALY-like framework, which fits perfectly with our utilitarian approach and could lead to actionable policy recommendations.
