Perspectives on Physiological Measures of Animal Welfare in Chronic Conditions
A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Welfare".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2021) | Viewed by 5310
Special Issue Editors
Interests: animal welfare; animal law; stress hormones; live export; intensive animal farming
Interests: welfare assessment; stress; sustainability; sentience; ethics; control of behaviour
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Measures of animal welfare often include assays of physiological factors, such as levels of adrenal hormones (cortisol, corticosterone) and other hormones such as oxytocin, blood cells, proteins, heart-rate, respiration rate, immune system effects, and a range of brain changes. Physiological measures can be valuable welfare indicators, especially for short-term welfare problems, providing interpretation includes reference to other measures and relevant context. However, some physiological measures give little information about how poor welfare is over the long-term, for example during long-term confinement, or about how good the welfare of the individual is. Furthermore, it is important to understand what changes in physiological measures tell us about the efficacy of coping attempts. What changes are of real significance to the animal?
We invite original research papers or short reviews that focus on the use of physiological measures to assess the extent of positive or negative animal welfare during living conditions, chronic interventions or disease. Such human interventions might include long-term confinement, prolonged transport or other actions with long-term effects such as maternal–offspring separation. Submissions should particularly address the relevance of changes observed or not observed for the functional and clinical status of the animal. We also invite papers or short reviews on relevant technical issues involved in these measures related to specificity, accuracy, and reproducibility of assays.
Dr. Malcolm P. Caulfield
Prof. Donald Broom
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- cortisol
- corticosterone
- oxytocin
- physiology
- immunology
- brain mechanisms
- stress
- welfare
- housing
- transport
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