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.
Parasites in the city: How is the impact of parasites on wild animal welfare affected by urbanization?
Grantee: Amanda Trask
Institutions: Institute of Zoology (IOZ), Zoological Society of London (ZSL)
Project summary
This project will evaluate the extent to which parasitism and urbanization impact wild animal welfare, both independently and synergistically, using physiological data on the internal and external parasite loads of deceased gray squirrels, as well as their body condition, immune function, and stress response. The researchers will also collect behavioral welfare indicators from other squirrels using camera traps. This data will be collected along a gradient of urbanization levels and analyzed in the context of the squirrels’ sex and age, to compare population-level welfare across sites varying in degree of urbanization and average parasite metrics and predict how future increases in urbanization might impact wildlife welfare.
Grantee: Amanda Trask
Institutions: Institute of Zoology (IOZ), Zoological Society of London (ZSL), United Kingdom
Grant amount: $199,941
Grant type: Challenge grant
Focal species: Eastern grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Infectious disease, population ecology
Research location: United Kingdom
Project summary
Parasitism is likely a key determiner of wild animal welfare, while rapidly increasing urbanisation presents novel challenges and welfare threats, yet the extent that parasitism and urbanisation impact wild animal welfare, both independently and synergistically, remains a major knowledge gap. An individual’s parasite infection status, and the associated welfare impacts, is dependent on parasite exposure risk and susceptibility. Urbanisation may alter exposure risk, for example through changes to population density and resource distribution, and susceptibility, for example through altered host immune function from exposure to urban stressors. Urbanisation may also compound impacts of parasitism, if chronically stressed individuals are less able to cope with further welfare challenges, resulting in synergistic negative welfare effects. Furthermore, welfare impacts of parasites and urbanisation may vary across sex- and life-stage classes, for example due to hormonal influences and changes in immune function with chronic exposure to urban pollution.
We will address this knowledge gap, using grey squirrels from UK sites across an urbanisation gradient. We will use detailed individual-level data on parasite loads and physical and physiological welfare indicators, collected from dead squirrels killed as part of non-native species management, to determine welfare impacts across sites varying in degree of urbanisation, and across sexes and life stages. Then, we will use behavioural indicators from camera trap data to determine associations between population-level welfare, parasite prevalence and degree of urbanisation. Finally, we will estimate ‘welfare expectancy’ of individuals from different populations using sex- and life-stage specific welfare scores. We will expand on current theory and develop a modelling tool to incorporate demographic and environmental stochasticity in welfare states into population models, to aid prediction of how increasing urbanisation may impact wildlife welfare in the future. This study will provide vital knowledge to aid understanding and prediction of the experience and future responses of wild animals to parasites in the context of increasing urbanization, facilitating design and integration of welfare-friendly urban environments for wildlife.
Why we funded this project
Gray squirrels are abundant, they live in close proximity to humans, and they could benefit from welfare interventions such as wildlife fertility control in the near future. Gray squirrels are not native in the UK, where this study will be conducted, and the welfare of non-native species is generally understudied or undervalued compared with native species of conservation interest. This project provides a special opportunity to take advantage of data from squirrels who are being killed as part of a government program, and to access valuable metrics that are hard to measure non-invasively, thereby creating from their deaths an opportunity to gain valuable insights that could ultimately help other squirrels. In addition to their good range of welfare indicators, we appreciate that this project will consider sex- and age-specific variation in welfare impacts and attempt to estimate “welfare expectancy” at a population level.
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).
Grantee: Carl Soulsbury
Institutions: University of Lincoln, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $148,741.43
Grant type: Challenge grant
Focal species: Red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and European hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Animal welfare science, animal behavior, physiology
Research location: United Kingdom
Project summary
Urbanisation causes profound changes to biodiversity. For many species living in urban areas, there is evidence that urban living leads to greater disease prevalence. It is unclear, however, (a) what factors drive this higher disease prevalence and (b) whether this leads to poorer wild animal welfare. We propose a study to compare two urban-dwelling species, red foxes and Eurasian hedgehogs, where we will characterize pathogen prevalence, load, and diversity across an urban-rural gradient. This study will be carried out at two scales: firstly, we will link pathogen loads, faecal glucocortoicoids and habitat at the landscape level, allowing us to broadly understand if urbanisation is associated with increased pathogen loads. We will then carry out a second, more detailed data collection where we will combine pathogen data with measures of stress (infra-red thermography, faecal glucocorticoids) and behavioural measures of affective valence (novel object and judgement bias tests). Here, we will link together pathogen loads and different measures of welfare at the individual level. Ultimately, our aim is to test, within each species, whether population differences in health and welfare are explained by environmental stressors arising from urbanisation (e.g., increased human population density and reduced habitat heterogeneity).
Why we funded this project
We appreciate that this project considers specific characteristics of urban environments, as opposed to simply comparing urban environments with rural ones. This way, it has more potential to inform near-term interventions. Plus, the project design humanely allows for animals’ voluntary participation. In addition to using an effective suite of welfare indicators to investigate the impact of different parasite loads on welfare, the combination of cognitive bias testing with non-invasive physiological stress metrics will provide information on the validity of those metrics, which are being used concurrently in other projects.
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.
Grantee: Amanda Koltz
Institutions: University of Texas at Austin, United States
Grant amount: $167,237
Grant type: Challenge grant
Focal species: White-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) and their helminth parasites
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Infectious disease, animal welfare science, animal behavior, physiology, community ecology
Research location: United States
Project summary
Parasite-mediated changes in host traits can have far-reaching ecological effects. Even sublethal infections affect hosts by increasing energetic costs and altering behavior, immunity, and physiology. Yet while many studies have investigated parasite effects on specific host traits, our understanding of how parasites influence overall individual welfare is limited, especially for wild animals. For example, parasites can drive changes in host diet and habitat use that reduce parasite exposure but not necessarily improve other metrics of host welfare. A holistic approach that captures different types of individual-level responses to parasitism is needed to advance our overall understanding of sublethal infections on host welfare. We propose to investigate how parasite burden is associated with individual-level host welfare using white-footed deer mice (Peromyscus leucopus) and their helminth parasites as a model system. Specifically, by experimentally removing gastrointestinal helminth parasites from P. leucopus, we will test how variation in parasite burden influences individual host body condition, diet and nutrition, microbiome, stress physiology, anxiety-like behavior, and exploratory behavior in forested ecosystems. P. leucopus has become the dominant small mammal species over the last 40 years in the northern Great Lakes region. It experiences sublethal infection by a range of helminth parasites and is a reservoir for several zoonotic pathogens, making its host-parasite dynamics highly relevant to the health of humans and other wildlife. By examining how infection levels relate to the diet, body functions, and behavior of P. leucopus, this study will advance our understanding of how non-lethal parasitic infections affect the welfare of an extremely widespread wild animal species.
Why we funded this project
We are excited to fund a study on wild mice, a highly numerous and neglected group, and especially one with such a welfare-friendly experimental approach — curing parasitic infections rather than causing them. The project also uses a holistic suite of physiological and behavioral indicators that should allow the researchers to disentangle overall welfare from narrow, mechanistic impacts of infection on the health and nutrition domains.
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.
Grantees: Vikki Neville and Lisa Leaver
Institutions: University of Bristol, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $157,049
Grant type: Challenge grant
Focal species: Grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Animal welfare science, physiology, animal behavior
Research location: United Kingdom
Project summary
The development of the cognitive judgment bias (CJB) task for non-human animals revolutionised the field of animal welfare. The CJB task: (a) is thought to measure both relatively better and relatively poorer welfare across the full spectrum of possible welfare states, (b) is non-invasive, and (c) has been validated using a meta-analytic approach. Moreover, the theoretical basis of the predictions for the CJB task should be applicable across taxa and, accordingly, it has been used successfully in many species. However, to date, its use has largely been in captive species and there are a dearth of examples in wild animals. A key barrier to implementation is that it is difficult to train animals to associate stimuli with particular outcomes: the time needed to do so makes these studies unsuccessful or infeasible in non-captive populations of animals. We propose that this could be overcome by capitalising on the natural behaviour of a species to reduce training time and by using equipment that allows automation of stimulus presentation and data collection.
The main aim of our proposed project is to develop a CJB task for use in wild animals, in particular wild squirrels. Our key objectives are to develop a task for collecting CJB data from grey squirrels which: (1) capitalises on their innate behaviour, obviating the need for extensive training, and (2) makes use of Raspberry Pi equipment so that the task can be easily implemented by other researchers and straightforwardly adapted for use across species to measure welfare and validate novel potential measures of welfare.
To assess that our task works as anticipated, secondary objectives will be to: (1) assess how CJB varies with task manipulations designed to alter affective valence (the distance of the equipment from cover, and levels of food provisioning in the environment), and (2) assess how CJB correlates with other potential non-invasive indicators of welfare (e.g. flight distance in response to humans, QBA scores, retrapability, social status, hair cortisol concentration, and fluctuations in eye temperature following positive and negative stimuli on the judgement bias test measured using infrared thermal cameras).
Why we funded this project
As noted above, cognitive bias tests are generally considered to be exceptionally robust welfare indicators, while gray squirrels are an abundant species and a prime target for near-term interventions. Therefore, we are excited to support the development of a cognitive judgment bias test for use on free-living gray squirrels, which will also help to assess the validity of simpler indicators, such as eye temperature and flight initiation distance.
Integrating behavioral competency and post-release support for reintroduced wildlife: a shift in paradigm for rehabilitation and beyond
Grantee: Karli Rice Chudeau
Institutions: 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.
Grantee: Karli Rice Chudeau
Institutions: The Marine Mammal Center, University of California, Davis, United States
Grant amount: $30,000
Grant type: Seed grants
Focal species: Northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris), eastern Pacific harbor seal (Phoca vitulina richardii)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Wildlife rehabilitation, animal behavior, animal welfare science
Research location: United States
Project summary
In many cases, the process of releasing a rehabilitated or translocated animal can be traumatic and removes the animal’s agency, potentially weakening their ability to thrive in the wild. 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 (distance traveled), and body condition, and the animals’ specific behavioral profiles (e.g. foraging behavior) 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.
Why we funded this project
We envision a world in which people take responsibility for improving wild animals’ lives and have the knowledge they need to do so effectively. Rehabilitation is a part of that. However, there has been relatively little research on post-release outcomes for rehabilitated animals. Understanding those outcomes and identifying strategies to improve them could have significant welfare implications, especially for the treatment of juvenile animals, whose life trajectories may be powerfully affected by the rehabilitation and release process. We appreciate that this project combines post-release monitoring with both a specific intervention and pre-release tests of affective state that would not be possible in a wild context.
Street smarts and bold behaviors: How humans and urban environments influence the welfare of wild mesocarnivores
Grantee: Lauren Stanton
Institutions: 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.
Grantee: Lauren Stanton
Institutions: University of California, Berkeley, United States
Grant amount: $255,000
Grant type: Fellowship
Focal species: Urban canine
Conservation status: Least concern
Research location: United States
Project summary
This project will evaluate the welfare impacts of both urban landscapes and human-wildlife conflict scenarios, focusing in particular on those of environmental contamination (e.g., pollution, anticoagulant rodenticides) 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 in a vicious cycle. The project will use a novel method to noninvasively assess and compare the behavior, cognition, and health of urban wildlife in relation to differences in environmental conditions. The study will use motion-activated infrared trail cameras to observe the behavior and evaluate the health and cognition of urban wildlife. By measuring important facets of each individual’s behavior (e.g., risk-taking), cognition (e.g., problem-solving), and health (e.g., body condition), the project will establish 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. In addition to improving understanding of the drivers of welfare in urban wildlife, the project will develop and demonstrate a novel approach that can be further used to understand individual welfare and, in particular, address limitations in the current ability to assess subjective experiences by validating the use of relevant cognitive indicators.
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Quantifying the impact of sea ice coverage on the welfare of grey seal pups
Grantee: Daire Carroll
Institutions: University of Gothenburg
Project summary
This project will use historic necropsy assessment and drone-based photogrammetry to establish and validate welfare proxies and remote behavioral and body conditions in grey seals as a remote welfare assessment tool. It will compare cortisol levels, behavior, and body condition of juvenile seals in land and ice breeding colonies at different densities to understand density-dependent welfare in relation to differences in environmental conditions. This information will be used to develop predictive models to identify welfare risk factors and opportunities to mitigate them. Opportunities to alleviate stress for juveniles during land breeding years will be identified and proposed. The project will demonstrate proof-of-concept for a combined population modeling and behavioral/health assessment approach that can be transferred to other species.
Grantee: Daire Carroll
Institutions: University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Grant amount: $151,000
Grant type: Fellowship
Focal species: Grey seal (Halichoerus grypus)
Conservation status: Least concern
Research location: Sweden
Project summary
This project will use historic necropsy assessment, including body condition indicators (size and blubber layer), cause of death, age, and parasite load, coupled with drone-based photogrammetry, to establish and validate welfare proxies. The project will subsequently establish and validate remote behavioral and body conditions in grey seals as a remote welfare assessment tool. The project will further seek to understand density-dependent welfare in relation to differences in environmental conditions by comparing cortisol levels from feces, behavior, and body condition of juvenile seals in land and ice breeding colonies at different seal densities. The combined information will be used to develop predictive models that can identify welfare risk factors and opportunities to mitigate them. Finally, the project will identify and propose opportunities to alleviate stress for juveniles during land breeding years to improve welfare. The project will demonstrate proof-of-concept for a combined population modeling and behavioral/health assessment approach that can be transferred to other species to understand risk factors for poor welfare and identify opportunities for correcting them.
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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
Institutions: 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.
Grantees: Lauren A. Harrington, Maria Diez Leon
Institutions: Oxford University, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $162,257
Grant type: Challenge grants
Focal species: American mink (Neovison vison), Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra)
Conservation status: Near threatened
Disciplines: Animal welfare science, community ecology, wildlife management
Research location: United Kingdom
Project summary
This project seeks to determine whether the welfare of American mink (Neovison vison) is negatively impacted in the presence of high densities of Eurasian otters (Lutra lutra), 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.
Why we funded this project
This project has the potential to contribute significant information to the understanding of intra-specific density-dependent welfare and to the understanding of network effects among predator-prey and competitor interactions of wild animals. Its unusually diverse set of welfare metrics will allow for cross-validation, strengthening both this project and other projects applying the same metrics. The investigators each have a strong background in animal welfare and have made efforts to better align their work with Wild Animal Initiative’s priorities for wild animal welfare, which makes them good candidates to carry forward the validation of these welfare indicators (particularly telomere attrition, which is still relatively immature in its use as a welfare indicator).
Find Maria’s other project, studying European minks, here.
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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.
Grantees: Michael Cherry, Joe Hediger
Institutions: Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute, Texas A&M University, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, United States
Grant amount: $25,860
Grant type: Small grants
Focal species: White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Physiology, animal welfare science
Research location: United States
Project summary
Wildlife are susceptible to both direct and indirect effects of thermal stress imposed by a warming climate. Direct effects include increased energetic costs to maintain a healthy body temperature and immune system impairment, while indirect effects include changes in food availability and increases in disease transmission. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in southern Texas are on the front lines of this environmental challenge. This project aims to assess the reliability of fecal tri-iodothyronine (T3) and fecal glucocorticoids (FGC) as non-invasive physiological metrics for monitoring the health of white-tailed deer. The use of T3 as an indicator of wildlife health and welfare is relatively novel, and the researchers will attempt to refine the use of these metrics through controlled experiments, correlating the T3 measurements with a more widely used indicator in FGC. Both physiological indicators will also be validated against behavioral observations of the same deer that are thought to reflect their emotional state.
Why we funded this project
The study findings will help in understanding how wild animals cope with increasing temperatures and the impact of thermal stress on their welfare and health. Notably, previous work has suggested that T3 measurements in ungulates are especially sensitive to thermal stress, and so comparing T3 with other indicators based on different physiological pathways, such as glucocorticoids, could help researchers to diagnose the relative significance of different environmental stressors an animal is facing. The project’s behavioral metrics are also crucial for realizing that potential. A secondary reason for our interest in this project is that it has near-term policy implications, potentially highlighting the value of preserving or promoting specific landscape features for the ecosystem service they offer, in the form of shade, to wild ungulates.
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Characterization of fecal oxytocin and immunoglobulin A in lions (Panthera leo): Exploring a multi-biomarker approach in animal welfare research
Grantee: Paula Serres Corral
Institution: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Project summary
This project will validate the measurement of oxytocin (OT) and secretory immunoglobulin A (IgA), markers of neuroendocrine and immune function, as biomarkers of wild animals’ welfare states. Both indicators have been measured in the saliva and urine of a limited set of wild mammalian species, but work on their analysis in fecal samples has been even more limited. This project will validate the measurement of OT and IgA in the feces of lions as a model for social carnivores, and evaluate their applicability as additional physiological indicators in wild animal welfare studies. The researchers will evaluate baseline levels for the species based on a small number of captive individuals and assess how these biomarkers are correlated with GCs and behavior.
Grantee: Paula Serres Corral
Institution: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Grant amount: $25,385
Grant type: Small grants
Focal species: Lion (Panthera leo)
Conservation status: Vulnerable
Disciplines: Physiology, animal welfare science
Research location: Spain
Project summary
Glucocorticoids (GCs) remain the most common physiological indicators of stress and, by extension, of animal welfare. However, welfare means more than stress, and therefore there is a need to develop complementary biomarkers to expand our knowledge of animals’ overall welfare states, both positive and negative. This project will consider oxytocin (OT) and secretory immunoglobulin A (IgA), markers of neuroendocrine and immune function respectively, which have been proposed as potential indicators of positive affective states. So far, both indicators have been reliably measured in the saliva and urine of a limited set of wild mammalian species. However, previous work on their analysis in fecal samples has been even more limited. This project aims to validate the measurement of OT and IgA in feces of lions (Panthera leo) as a model for social carnivores and evaluate their applicability as additional physiological indicators in wildlife welfare studies. The researchers will evaluate baseline levels for the species based on a small number of captive individuals, and assess how these biomarkers are correlated with GCs and behavior.
Why we funded this project
With a multi-biomarker approach, these potential biomarkers, in combination with GCs, will enable a more robust interpretation of findings in welfare assessments. We are especially interested in the potential for these physiological indicators to support identification of positive welfare states in wild animals, considering the crucial role of oxytocin, for example, in social bonding. Although the project itself is limited to a small number of captive individuals, we expect that this project will represent a significant step towards validating these putative indicators of positive welfare thanks to the detailed behavioral monitoring that the captive environment allows, including a Quantitative Behavioral Assessment (QBA) approach.
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