Advancing Animal Welfare Assessment: From Biomarkers to Smart Monitoring Technologies

The definition of animal welfare has undergone a significant transformation, evolving from the focus on physical health to a more holistic approach that includes behavior, emotional states, and the ability of animals to cope with continuous and dynamic environmental changes. Respecting species-specific ethological needs has become central to the ethics and sustainability of animal husbandry and management systems. However, growing societal expectations and the climate emergency demand a deeper understanding of animal stress, including behavioral plasticity and physiological adaptations to environmental stressors. In this context, technologies such as wearable sensors and AI-driven behavioral analysis enable real-time, non-invasive monitoring of welfare indicators alongside the concurrent use of biomarkers and metabolites, assessed through robust and reliable techniques, provides valuable insights into animals’ stress conditions.



Despite significant technological progress and the growing availability of advanced tools, standardizing methodological approaches for animal welfare assessment remains a major challenge, especially in terms of ensuring replicability and reproducibility. Integrating emotional states with immune responses - whether through animal models or hormonal profiles - represents a key limitation current technologies and experimental designs must overcome. This Research Topic lies at the intersection of innovative experimental approaches to studying animal welfare under changing environmental conditions and the socio-economic sustainability of animal management systems. For example, rising temperatures caused by global warming have a profound impact on animal thermoregulation and homeostasis, affecting breeding performance and heat tolerance. Developing effective methods to measure animals' stress responses and identifying timely, appropriate actions is the central goal of this Research Topic. By addressing these issues, we aim to foster a more accurate and actionable understanding of welfare under environmental and management stressors.



This Research Topic aims to gather studies presenting novel methodological approaches to animal welfare assessment, with a focus on advanced technologies and biomarker evaluation across different animal species and environmental contexts. The overarching objective is to promote interdisciplinary research that enhances the accuracy, reliability, and applicability of welfare evaluation methods. We invite contributions including original research articles, reviews and systematic reviews, and critical perspectives addressing recent advancements in sensor-based monitoring, data analytics, precision farming, molecular and physiological stress indicators in domestic, laboratory and wild animals, and other innovative tools. Submissions should contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of animal well-being, integrating knowledge from ethology, stress biology, and sustainable animal management practices.

Keywords: Animal welfare, Environmental stress, Physiological biomarkers, Wearable technologies, Precision livestock farming, Ethology, Sustainability

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.