Artificial Intelligence (AI) are now being used by researchers to help identify insects with supernatural speed. Such technology, advances entomological science.
"With the help of advanced camera technology, we can now collect millions of photos at our field sites. When we, at the same time, teach the computer to tell the different species apart, the computer can quickly identify the different species in the images and count how many it found of each of them. It is a game-changer compared to having a person with binoculars in the field or in front of the microscope in the lab who manually identifies and counts the animals," explains senior scientist Toke T. Høye from Department of Bioscience and Arctic Research Centre at Aarhus University, who headed the new study.
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"We can use the deep learning to find the needle in the hay stack so to speak -- the specimen of a rare or undescribed species among all the specimens of widespread and common species. In the future, all the trivial work can be done by the computer and we can focus on the most demanding tasks, such as describing new species, which until now was unknown to the computer, and to interpret the wealth of new results we will have" explains Toke T. Høye.
Findings of the study were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source: Science Daily
