As mobile devices increasingly support biodiversity monitoring, acoustic detection and identification of insects opens up a new avenue to expand the coverage of biodiversity monitoring in the UK.
In Humbug I, we deployed end-to-end AI pipelines for environmental acoustic sensing and developed a mosquito monitoring mobile application for use on budget smartphones. This general approach targets locations that can be difficult to access and, combined with small solar panels and mobile service connectivity, allows for long-term, passive, automated surveillance. Such technology is ideally suited for the detection and monitoring of invasive species, where the species density is initially low, meaning surveillance efforts can be costly and uncertain but still have to be balanced against the potential economic cost of successful invasion.
Work in the Humbug II project is adapting this acoustic monitoring system to detect invasive insect species in the UK, including, in the first instance, the Asian tiger mosquito and the Asian hornet.
