Enabling large-scale acoustic monitoring for invasive species
Insects are ideal bioindicators to assess the “health” of terrestrial ecosystems. They are the most prevalent, easily quantified organism in any ecosystem and are often the first group impacted by habitat loss, over exploitation, longer term climatic changes or pollutants including chemical, light and noise. They are also useful indicators of other more subtle perturbations in an ecosystem including the presence of a new competitor or predator.
Invasive insect species can impact biodiversity, health, and economies - but a species on the move is notoriously difficult to detect with low densities and sparse distributions as they begin to adapt to their new habitat. However, it is during this period of low density that control can be most cost effective, if targeted correctly. Low cost, high density passive monitoring can detect invasive species early and allow control to be targeted, effective and economical.
Building on the work in Humbug I which successfully developed a surveillance system to monitor mosquitoes in Africa, we are working with biodiversity experts (UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology), stakeholder representatives (the British Bee Keepers Association), and commercial partners (Mind Foundry, Aioi R&D Lab) to develop a mobile acoustic sensing system suitable for monitoring invasive insect species in the UK, in particular the Asian hornet and the Asian tiger mosquito.
Both these invasive species are now established in Europe and have been detected in southern England. The Asian tiger mosquito is a vector of several arboviruses including yellow fever, dengue, zika, and chikungunya. The Asian hornet is a highly efficient predator of pollinating insects including honey bees.
In the Humbug II project, by combining recent advances in mobile application development and the latest in on-device machine learning, we will develop end-to-end systems covering data collection, processing, analysis, and vizualisation suitable for monitoring the occurrence of invasive insect species in the UK and hence determining their potential impact on human health and local biodiversity.
