PhD Studentship: The Characterisation, Demography and Abundance of Unowned Cats across the UK

Project description:

We know very little about unowned domestic cats in the UK. Unlike owned cats, which are primarily managed by private individuals, unowned cats often receive limited to no intentional human support. Considerations surrounding unowned cat populations are well-documented and span multiple fields of research including animal welfare, conservation and public health. Despite the well-recognised interest in unowned cat populations, there remains a lack of understanding of their abundance and demographics across the UK.

Population research to date on this relative understudied subgroup has led to the development of a key statistical tool that paired public sightings of suspected unowned cats with confirmatory data to enable robust estimates of unowned cat populations (termed an integrated abundance model(McDonald & Hodgson 2021) This piece of work identified key influencers of the abundance of unowned cats in urban areas, enabling the first evidence-based calculation of the number of urban unowned cats across the UK. The model estimated approximately 250,000 unowned cats living in towns and cities across the UK, with unowned cat populations interlinked with the density and socioeconomic status of human populations (McDonald & Skillings 2021).

Subsequently, a dynamic cat population modelling project was launched at Cats Protection, which aimed to develop a flexible tool for modelling cat populations over time. The model set out to consider and understand domestic cats in the UK, by providing a framework that recognises different  cat types (owned, shelter, stray and unowned) and their connections (McDonald, et al. 2023). This work highlighted that connectivity between cat subpopulations can have a big influence on population dynamics. However, as part of this process we identified a lack of UK-based data on unowned cat demographics.

This PhD project is interdisciplinary, employing a range of research methods including critical literature searches and reviews, qualitative research and population modelling and analysis to help:

• Understand terminology around unowned cats and implications for their behavioural and demographic characteristics.
• Create standardised working definitions to take forward into further demographic research.
• Obtain evidence-based figures for the abundance and distribution of unowned free-roaming cat populations across the UK, with a particular focus on understudied rural areas, including identification of predictors of unowned cat presence considering environmental, societal and demographic characteristics.
• Understand current evidence around unowned cat survival and reproduction, and any influence of resources, conditions and density dependence.
• Develop domestic cat population demographic modelling.

We especially welcome applications that connect to any of ours and our project partners core research interests, which include population demography, population modelling, ecology and animal welfare. Close links with Cats Protection, the UK’s largest feline welfare charity, will support the student and help to produce research with real-world impact.

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