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.
Pre- and Post-release Welfare Indicators for Recovery Programs
Grantee: Laney Hayward Nute
Institution: University of Mississippi
Project summary
Captive-raised animals translocated to the wild often suffer high mortality. This project seeks to identify a set of pre- and post-release indicators of welfare to target released Attwater’s prairie chickens for management interventions. Pre-release, the coping styles of birds will be identified during routine cage transfers and handling. Following release, the fine-scale movements of released birds will be traced using customized data loggers. Investigating the association of pre- and post-release behaviors with body condition, daily environment changes, and survival, will identify which birds from future releases will need special attention to aid their survival. The researchers hypothesize that individuals with a more proactive personality will disperse further post-release and suffer higher mortality rates compared to more reactive individuals.
Grantee: Laney Hayward Nute
Institution: University of Mississippi, United States
Grant amount: $30,000
Grant type: Small grants
Focal species: Attwater's Prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus cupido attwateri)
Conservation status: Endangered
Disciplines: Wildlife rehabilitation, animal behavior, ornithology
Research location: United States
Project summary
Captive-raised animals translocated to the wild often suffer high mortality; for example, Attwater’s prairie chickens have had a survival rate of only 17-18% post-release in recent years. The focus of many translocation programs is on investing resources to produce more individuals rather than to improve the welfare of released animals. This project seeks to reduce the stress and suffering of released Attwater's prairie chicken by identifying a set of pre- and post-release indicators of welfare to target individuals for management interventions. Pre-release, the coping styles of individual birds will be identified during routine cage transfers and handling. Following release, the fine-scale movements of released birds will be traced using customized data loggers. By investigating the association of pre- and post-release behaviors with the body condition, daily environment changes, and ultimate survival of these individuals, it will be possible to identify which birds from future releases will need special attention to aid their survival. The researchers hypothesize that individuals with a more proactive (“bold”) personality will disperse further post-release and suffer higher mortality rates compared to more reactive individuals.
Why we funded this project
Understanding of associations between coping style/personality and welfare outcomes/challenges could be used to predict at-risk individuals in need of interventions such as supplemental feeding, translocation, or medical treatment. For wildlife rehabilitation or “headstarting” programs, coping style associations could also be used to inform rearing protocols to promote resilient styles that result in improved individual welfare in the wild.
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Developing a consensus profile of wild animal welfare: integrating non-invasive monitoring of the gut microbiome with stress physiology and behavior
Grantee: Sam Sonnega
Institution: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Project summary
This project will characterize the gut microbiome of white-footed mice and investigate its relationship with their stress physiology and behavior. Mice will be trapped and fecal samples collected to measure glucocorticoid concentrations and gut microbiome composition. Concurrently, open-field trials will be conducted to assess individual variation in cognitive bias. Perception of predation risk will also be experimentally manipulated by exposing mice to playbacks of predator noises. By correlating the gut microbiome with behavioral and endocrine metrics, a consensus profile of the mice’s welfare will be developed that reflects the complexity of their responses to environmental perturbations, and how those responses can scale up to population and ecosystem level changes via the demographic effects of stress in a “landscape of fear.”
Grantee: Sam Sonnega
Institution: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, United States
Grant amount: $29,130
Grant type: Small grants
Focal species: White-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Physiology, animal welfare science, animal behavior
Research location: United States
Publications
Sonnega, S. and Sheriff, M.J. (2024). Harnessing the gut microbiome: a potential biomarker for wild animal welfare. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2024.1474028
Project summary
This project will characterize the gut microbiome of wild white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus) and investigate its relationship with their stress physiology and behavior, including how it changes in response to ecological pressures. While a growing literature from lab-based studies has demonstrated the link between the gut microbiome and regulation of host physiology and behavior, the generality of these findings in ecological contexts remains largely untested. As part of this project, mice will be trapped during different seasons and fecal samples will be collected from which to measure both glucocorticoid concentrations and gut microbiome composition. Concurrently, open-field trials will be conducted to assess individual variation in cognitive bias towards optimism or pessimism (a well-established behavioral indicator of affective state). The mice’s perception of predation risk will also be experimentally manipulated by exposing free-living mice to playbacks of predator noises. By correlating the gut microbiome with both behavioral and endocrine metrics, a consensus profile of the mice’s welfare will be developed that reflects the complexity of their responses to both predictable and unpredictable environmental perturbations, and how those responses can scale up to population and ecosystem level changes via the demographic effects of stress in a so-called “landscape of fear.”
Why we funded this project
We are interested in the development and validation of the gut microbiome as a welfare indicator. Every additional indicator strengthens the interpretation of others, but understanding the gut microbiome may be especially important because it is part of the causal chain linking what is going on in the animal’s brain to fecal metabolites, which are often analyzed as a non-invasive and time-integrated record of physiological stress. This project also links and builds on other gut microbiome research we have funded (by Melissa Bateson, Pablo Capilla-Lasheras, and Davide Dominoni).
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Assessing the Welfare of Wild Olive Baboons (Papio anubis) at the Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project, Laikipia, Kenya
Grantee: Monica Wakefield
Institution: Northern Kentucky University and Iowa State University
Project summary
This project aims to assess the welfare of wild baboons using a holistic approach. The study takes advantage of almost 40 years of long-term ecological, demographic, health, and behavioral information on >170 individually known baboons, and will examine how various factors such as age, sex, and social rank correlate with individual welfare measures such as incidence of injury and disease, body mass, and pro-social or agonistic behaviors. The annual scale of the dataset will also enable the researchers to test how events such as droughts have affected welfare during specific periods, and how these effects may have varied according to individual animals’ demographic profiles and biographies.
Grantee: Monica Wakefield
Institutions: Northern Kentucky University and Iowa State University, United States
Grant amount: $29,800
Grant type: Small grants
Focal species: Wild olive baboon (Papio anubis)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Animal welfare science, animal behavior, primatology
Research location: Kenya, United States
Project summary
This project aims to assess the welfare of wild baboons using a holistic approach. The study takes advantage of almost 40 years of long-term ecological, demographic, health, and behavioral information on >170 individually known baboons, and will examine how various factors such as age, sex, and social rank correlate with individual welfare measures such as incidence of injury and disease, body mass, and pro-social or agonistic behaviors. The annual scale of the dataset will also enable the researchers to test how events such as droughts have affected welfare during specific periods, and how these effects may have varied according to individual animals’ demographic profiles and biographies.
Why we funded this project
We are excited by this project’s analysis of a long-term longitudinal dataset because of the importance of understanding how wild animals’ welfare varies with demographic factors such as age and sex, as these groups often face different challenges and have different ecological and behavioral requirements, and negative welfare impacts that fall on young individuals may also have ripple effects throughout their lives. We also appreciate this project’s holistic approach. The long-term monitoring means it is possible to consider not only the usual downstream welfare indicators based on health and behavior, but also upstream factors that might influence them, such as social interactions and exposure to predators.
The animal welfare of animal warfare: how inter-group interactions affect wild animal wellbeing
Grantee: Dominic Cram
Institution: University of Cambridge
Project summary
This project will investigate the welfare consequences of inter-group conflicts in wild Kalahari meerkats. It will use an established dataset of meerkat behavior, body weight, territory use, and reproduction, covering more than 500 inter-group interactions over 14 years. Identifying the short- and long-term welfare implications of inter-group interactions in meerkats will shed light on similar animal warfare in group-living insects, fish, birds, and mammals. Clarifying the circumstances that lead to the most harmful battles will provide a first step in understanding how their frequency could be reduced, which could limit the suffering they cause and enhance the welfare of group-living wild animals.
Grantee: Dominic Cram
Institution: University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $29,965
Grant type: Small grants
Focal species: Meerkats (Suricata suricatta)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Animal behavior, population ecology, community ecology
Research location: United Kingdom, South Africa
Project summary
Fierce group conflicts are not uniquely human, and many group-living animals regularly engage in “animal warfare.” These inter-group interactions play an influential role in natural population regulation, yet the health and well-being consequences for those involved remain unclear. Conservation and management interventions are currently developed with little understanding of how large-scale conflict affects welfare in wild animals. Given that anthropogenic habitat loss and climate change could increase the frequency of inter-group battles, there is an urgent need to investigate the welfare cost of animal warfare. This research program will investigate the welfare consequences of intergroup interactions and fights in wild Kalahari meerkats (Suricata suricatta). The project will take advantage of an established dataset of meerkat behavior, body weight, territory use, and reproduction, covering more than 500 inter-group interactions over 14 years. Identifying the short- and long-term welfare implications of inter-group interactions in meerkats will shed light on similar animal warfare in group-living insects, fish, birds, and mammals. Clarifying the circumstances that lead to the most harmful battles will provide a first step in understanding how their frequency could be reduced, which could limit the suffering they cause and enhance the welfare of group-living wild animals.
Why we funded this project
This project addresses a neglected topic related to our research priority of understanding conflicts of interest between wild animal groups. We especially appreciate this project’s holistic approach to welfare assessment, its attention to indirect effects (collateral damage) of animal conflicts in the form of costs to orphaned juveniles and the creation of a “landscape of fear,” and the openness of the investigators to considering interventions that could elevate wild animal welfare above its natural baseline.
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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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Determining the practical and statistical methods necessary for employing field-based metrics of welfare on wild, juvenile, birds
Grantee: Daniel Hanley
Institution: George Mason University
Project summary
Because welfare can vary between individuals and throughout the life of an animal, methods for measuring, assessing, and comparing welfare have been a barrier to our understanding of juvenile welfare. Initial investigations of welfare metrics are needed to estimate age-specific welfare in wild juvenile animals, to determine how they deviate from population-level estimates, and to extend methods and metrics to other systems. This study will examine welfare in free-living prothonotary warblers to establish standardized field and analytical procedures necessary to obtain age-specific animal welfare estimates. Prothonotary warblers are an ideal model system for studying age-specific welfare because they have well-defined life stages, face unique environmental risks, have variable survival, and nest within cavities, affording a degree of standardization and control.
Grantee: Daniel Hanley
Institution: George Mason University, United States
Grant amount: $60,000
Grant type: Challenge grants
Focal species: Prothonotary warbler (Protonotaria citrea)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Ornithology, animal behavior, population ecology
Research location: United States
Project summary
The juvenile stage is where welfare conditions are likely the most variable and impactful on an individual’s growth and behavior. Unfortunately, methods for measuring, assessing, and comparing welfare have been a barrier to our understanding of juvenile welfare. Like other aspects of animal life history, welfare will vary between individuals and also over the lives of animals in an age-specific fashion. Thus, metrics such as welfare expectancy can inform us of the welfare that an organism is likely to experience, similar to how life expectancy can provide an estimate on how much longer an organism may live.
This study examines welfare in free-living juvenile songbirds to establish standardized field and analytical procedures necessary to obtain age-specific animal welfare estimates. Prothonotary warblers are an ideal model system for studying age-specific welfare because they have well-defined life stages (i.e., egg, nestling, fledgling, subadult, adult), face unique environmental risks (e.g., drought and flooding), and have variable survival. Furthermore, members of this species nest within cavities, which affords a degree of standardization and control necessary for an initial investigation of welfare metrics. Such initial investigations are crucial to estimate age-specific welfare on wild juvenile animals, to determine how they deviate from population-level welfare estimates, and to extend these methods and metrics to other systems.
Why we funded this project
We funded this project because it sought to explicitly quantify welfare across life stages, using multiple physiological, behavioral, and environmental/demographic indicators. Knowing how (and ideally why) average welfare differs over the course of life in a population could have important implications for interventions to improve their welfare (e.g., fertility control). We were also impressed with this PI because he engages numerous students in their lab and is relatively early in his own career, potentially allowing for pivot to focus more on wild animal welfare. He also demonstrated a good understanding of Wild Animal Initiative’s research on the welfare expectancy framework and sought to put the concepts into practice. That sort of theory-to-practice pipeline would represent a significant step for welfare biology as a research field.
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It takes guts to grow in the city: the role of the gut microbiome in the welfare of juvenile urban birds
Grantee: Pablo Capilla-Lasheras
Institution: University of Glasgow
Project summary
Approximately 30 million blue tits hatch every year in UK cities, but around 63% die as juveniles. One reason for this may be that juvenile birds in urban habitats tend to have low-quality diets, causing stunted growth and increased early-life mortality. Research suggests that gut microbiome composition may contain indicators of an animal’s welfare, but this has received little attention in a wild animal context. This project will combine telomere attrition, begging behavior, and other health metrics with a study of juvenile birds’ gut microbiomes to investigate how to improve the welfare of juvenile blue tits in urban areas. It will also test the potential for gut microbiome enrichment to improve the life experience of juvenile birds in urban habitats.
Grantee: Pablo Capilla-Lasheras
Institution: University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $59,052
Grant type: Challenge grants
Focal species: Blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Physiology, population ecology, animal welfare science, ornithology, animal behavior
Research location: United Kingdom
Publications
Reid, R., et al. (2024). The impact of urbanization on health depends on the health metric, life stage and level of urbanization: a global meta-analysis on avian species. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 291(2027). https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.0617
Project summary
Amongst the novel stressors that wildlife face in cities, shifts in diet are prevalent and have negative consequences for welfare, particularly in juveniles. Research clearly shows that juvenile birds in urban habitats have low-quality diets, causing stunted growth and increased early-life mortality. For example, in the UK alone, approximately 30 million blue tits hatch every year in cities, but around 63% of them die as juveniles. This project will study juvenile blue tits and investigate how to improve their welfare in urban areas using an integrative approach that will combine metrics of animal welfare with the study of gut microbiomes. Human and captive animal studies suggest that the gut microbiome composition may contain indicators of an animal’s welfare, but this has received little attention in a wild animal context. This study will combine a physiological welfare indicator (telomere attrition), a behavioral welfare indicator (begging behavior), and other health metrics with a study of juvenile birds’ gut microbiomes to link poor-quality urban diets, gut microbiome composition, and welfare. The project will also test a potential near-term dietary intervention (gut microbiome enrichment) to improve the life experience of juvenile birds growing in urban habitats.
Why we funded this project
Welfare is shaped by, and in turn influences, numerous aspects of an animal’s phenotype. Individual welfare indicators offer only limited insights, but combining indicators across multiple domains is thought to be extremely important for triangulating affective state, or “true” welfare. Because the gut microbiome represents a partially distinct domain, understanding how it relates to welfare could therefore strengthen all of our other indicators when they are used in combination. We were especially interested in this project due to the inclusion of an intervention experiment that could be implemented in the near future. Finally, this project will support an early-career researcher with an interest in wild animal welfare.
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The impact of road noise on the welfare of free-living juvenile white-footed mice
Grantee: Michael Sheriff
Institution: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Project summary
This project will examine how road noise impacts the ability of juvenile white-footed mice in Massachusetts to respond to the threat of predation. Preliminary work has shown that experimental manipulation of road noise disrupts the foraging responses of (adult) small mammals to predation risk, possibly by masking their ability to perceive predators’ auditory cues. Perception of predation threat will be experimentally manipulated by auditory playback of owl noises at sites near and far from the highway, paired with controls at the same distances from the highway without auditory playback. Anxiety-related behaviors will be recorded in juveniles in an open field trap, and their feces will be studied to assess physiological stress and nutritional status.
Grantee: Michael Sheriff
Institution: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, United States
Grant amount: $60,000
Grant type: Challenge grants
Focal species: White-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Human-wildlife conflict, animal behavior, population ecology, mammalogy
Research location: United States
Project summary
This project will examine the impact of road noise on juvenile welfare in white-footed mice in Massachusetts. The project will focus on how road noise impacts the ability of juveniles to respond appropriately to the threat of predation (the most common cause of juvenile small mammal mortality). Preliminary work has shown that experimental manipulation of road noise (played at 62-65dB, which is equivalent to 100m into the forest from a major thoroughfare to Boston, MA) disrupts the normal foraging responses of (adult) small mammals to predation risk, possibly by masking their ability to perceive auditory cues of predators. Perception of predation threat will be experimentally manipulated by auditory playback of owl noises at sites near and far from the highway, paired with controls at the same distances from the highway but without auditory playback. Anxiety-related behaviors will be recorded in juveniles in an open field trap (which they voluntarily enter for feed), and their feces will be studied to assess physiological stress and nutritional status.
Why we funded this project
Road noise has dramatically increased and is potentially a major anthropogenic threat to wild animal welfare, and one which might be easily ameliorated through policy changes (e.g., improved sound barriers). This project is especially interesting because it focuses on a less obvious effect of road noise, potentially increasing the risk of predation by masking predator cues. This becomes even more interesting in the context of growing literature on the “ecology of fear,” sublethal effects of predators on prey behavior. If road noise makes prey unaware of risks, it could actually reduce their chronic stress despite exposing them to greater risk of death. We are excited for this project to explore those issues, although we are prepared for a complex result. Additionally, we wanted to support this PI because of their strong record of engaging students in their research and influencing their career trajectories.
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The impact of anthropogenic stressors on the affective state of juvenile Murray cod
Grantee: Rafael Freire
Institution: Charles Sturt University
Project summary
Many freshwater fish populations have severely declined as a result of human-caused changes in their environment. Population decline often results from an increased mortality rate experienced on the individual level, with likely implications for the welfare of individuals living through a period of population decline. This study will examine how differences in water quality and the presence of potential predators affect a behavioral indicator of welfare — judgment bias — in juvenile Murray cod (Maccullochella peelii). In the future, data about how juvenile fish respond to these factors could guide interventions for helping juvenile fish survive to adulthood in the wild.
Grantee: Rafael Freire
Institution: Charles Sturt University, Australia
Grant amount: $21,500
Grant type: Challenge grants
Focal species: Murray cod (Maccullochella peelii)
Conservation status: Critically endangered
Disciplines: Animal behavior, sentience, ichthyology
Research location: Australia
Publications
Freire, R. and Nicole, C.J. (2024). A novel method to measure the impact of water quality on judgement bias in wild juvenile fish. Global Ecology and Conservation, 54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2024.e03086
Project summary
Many freshwater fish populations have severely declined as a result of human-caused changes in their environment. Population decline often results from an increased mortality rate experienced on the individual level, with likely implications for the welfare of individuals living through a period of population decline. This study will examine how differences in water quality and the presence of potential predators affect a behavioral indicator of welfare — judgment bias — in juvenile Murray cod (Maccullochella peelii). In the future, data about how juvenile fish respond to these factors could guide interventions for helping juvenile fish survive to adulthood in the wild.
Why we funded this project
The vast majority of wild fish do not survive to adulthood, but little is known about their welfare as juveniles and how that might affect their survival. This project will address that by investigating the effects of multiple aspects of habitat quality on the affective state of juvenile Murray cod. An additional factor in us funding this project was that it would be integrated into ongoing fisheries policy work by the PI, which should ultimately lead to advice for the regional government.
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Density-Dependent Welfare in Wild Bird Social Networks: Linking resource distributions with disease dynamics
Grantee: Joshua Firth
Institution: University of Oxford
Project summary
This project will investigate how various potential density-dependent drivers of welfare interact and influence net welfare in two species of tit. Population density is expected to be directly related to infectious disease transfer and increased competition, but also to covary with processes that are potentially beneficial to welfare. The study will use historical data to determine how the relationship between population density and individual welfare is shaped by infectious disease, body condition, and mortality risk. The investigators will then manipulate density experimentally to test model outputs and determine potential causal links.
Grantee: Josh Firth
Institution: University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Grant amount: $99,466
Grant type: Challenge grants
Focal species: Great tits (Parus major), blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus)
Conservation status: Least concern
Disciplines: Animal behavior, community ecology, infectious disease, population ecology, ornithology, bio/eco-informatics, ecological modeling, animal welfare science
Research location: United Kingdom
Project summary
This project seeks to understand the interplay among various potential density-dependent drivers of positive and negative welfare impacts to determine net welfare related to aggregation (increased density) in wild birds (two species of tit). Infectious disease transfer and increased competition, both likely to reduce welfare, are expected to be directly related to population density. However, population density also covaries with processes that are potentially beneficial to welfare, such as congregation around areas that provide high nutrition, various social benefits, opportunities for increased cooperation, or access to social information. The study will use long-term datasets to empirically determine how the relationship between population density and individual welfare is shaped by infectious disease, including the density-dependent relationship with disease spread. Additionally, using historical data, the project will test how population density, mediated by social contact, environment, and disease, determines individuals’ body condition and mortality risk. Based on the results of this observational phase of the study, the investigators will then manipulate density experimentally, to test model outputs and determine potential causal links.
Why we funded this project
This project brings two unique advantages. First, the investigators have access to a population that has been subject to intensive monitoring for decades, meaning that much of the relevant ecological context is known and there is historical data to analyze retrospectively. Secondly, in part due to this long-term monitoring, the birds are tagged and observed at feeding stations equipped with RFID tags/readers that allow for experimental manipulation of the density and identity of birds feeding at particular stations. By empirically testing density-dependent models of welfare, the project could provide an increased understanding of the interplay among population density, infectious disease, and various social and environmental characteristics, and in doing so, identify drivers of welfare in wild birds.
