Autonomous camera traps for insects provide a tool for long-term remote monitoring of insects. These systems bring together cameras, computer vision, and autonomous infrastructure such as solar panels, mini computers, and data telemetry to collect images of insects.
With increasing recognition of the importance of insects as the dominant component of almost all ecosystems, there are growing concerns that insect biodiversity has declined globally, with serious consequences for the ecosystem services on which we all depend.
Automated camera traps for insects offer one of the best practical and cost-effective solutions for more standardised monitoring of insects across the globe. However, to realise this we need interdisciplinary teams who can work together to develop the hardware systems, AI components, metadata standards, data analysis, and much more.
This WILDLABS group has been set up by people from around the world who have individually been tackling parts of this challenge and who believe we can do more by working together.
We hope you will become part of this group where we share our knowledge and expertise to advance this technology.
Check out Tom's Variety Hour talk for an introduction to this group.
Learn about Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects by checking out recordings of our webinar series:
- Hardware design of camera traps for moth monitoring
- Assessing the effectiveness of these autonomous systems in real-world settings, and comparing results with traditional monitoring methods
- Designing machine learning tools to process camera trap data automatically
- Developing automated camera systems for monitoring pollinators
- India-focused projects on insect monitoring
Meet the rest of the group and introduce yourself on our welcome thread - https://www.wildlabs.net/discussion/welcome-autonomous-camera-traps-insects-group
Group curators
- @tom_august
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Computational ecologist with interests in computer vision, citizen science, open science, drones, acoustics, data viz, software engineering, public engagement



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Import/distribution business background and tech tinkerer with an interest in wildlife.
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- @tomwhite101
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Agroecology Geek
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An Environmental sciences and Management graduate from SUA, passionate and eager to drive change to the Environment, making World a better place for present and future generations.





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https://www.songquanong.com/
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- @rays45693
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PhD Student in Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, working on wildlife conservation using deep learning
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Wildlife enthusiast who happens to run an embedded systems lab

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- @hannahrisser
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CEH
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- @Mathilde
- | she/her
Natural Solutions
Engineer, I work for a web development company on web application projects for biodiversity conservation. I'm especially interested by camera traps, teledetection and DeepLearning subjects.
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Wildlife Drones
Wildlife Drones has developed the world’s most innovative radio animal-tracking system using drones so you can track your radio-tagged animals like never before.


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Interesting new methods to help improve insect detection "...this paper proposes three previously unused data augmentation approaches (gamma correction, bilateral filtering, and bit-plate slicing) which artificially...
31 August 2023
Apply for funding (£500,000-£750,000) to develop software systems, which will help to improve biodiversity monitoring by automating the analysis of images and videos
12 July 2023
Careers
Permanent and Full Time role at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
8 June 2023
The Department of Ecoscience, Aarhus University, invites applications for a postdoc position to strengthen our team on image recognition and deep learning in ecology. Specifically, the candidate will further develop...
9 May 2023
Postdoctoral position for 12 months initially, Cambridge University Agroecology Research Group.
6 April 2023
Recording from our last webinar on India-focused projects on insect monitoring, where we had researchers of Indian origin or researchers working in Indian organisations present their work on insect monitoring.
23 March 2023
New technology enabling the automated monitoring of moths has been put to rigorous testing in tropical conditions in Panama by an international team of researchers
22 February 2023
Are you excited by the potential for new technologies to help monitor the natural world? Do you enjoy communicating your passion for technology and nature with diverse audiences? We are seeking an enthusiastic...
2 February 2023
Are you stuck on an AI or ML challenge in your conservation work? Apply now for the chance to receive tailored expert advice from data scientists! Applications due 27th January 2023
18 January 2023
This position focuses on the ecology aspect of the project, while a second PhD in Ilmenau will be dealing with programming/AI development. Because of the high temporal resolution of our data, we can investigate how land...
9 January 2023
a technology-led solution to understanding the honeybees of the wasp world
8 December 2022
May 2025
November 2023
event
Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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We did some more testing with the Mothbeam in the forest. It's the height of dry season right now, so not many moths came out, but the mothbeam shined super bright and attracted a... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Latin America Community | 1 year 3 months ago | |
Hi Danilo, yes just in time ;-) |
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Camera Traps, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 1 year 3 months ago | |
Yep, here:Currently it only installs on older Jetsons as in the coming weeks I’ll finish the install code for current jetsons.Technically speaking, if you were an IT specialist... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps | 1 year 4 months ago | |
Great work! I very much look forward to trying out the MothBeam light. That's going to be a huge help in making moth monitoring more accessible.And well done digging into the... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Latin America Community | 1 year 4 months ago | |
The preprint to our camera trap paper is now available at bioRxiv. |
+23
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 1 year 5 months ago | |
Thanks a lot for this detailed update on your project! It looks great! |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Latin America Community | 1 year 6 months ago | |
It depends on which scientists you talk to. I am an favor of just doing a timelapse and doing a post-processing sort afterwards. There's not much reason i can see for such motion... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Latin America Community | 1 year 6 months ago | |
For anyone interested: the GBIF guide Best Practices for Managing and Publishing Camera Trap Data is still open for review and feedback until next week. More info can be found in... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps | 1 year 6 months ago | |
This is super cool! Me and @Hubertszcz and @briannajohns and several others are all working towards some big biodiversity monitoring projects for a large conservation project here... |
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AI for Conservation, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps, Funding and Finance | 1 year 8 months ago | |
Plasticy substances like polyester can be slippery, so I imagine that's why cotton is most often used. White is good for color correction, while still reflecting light pretty well... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 1 year 8 months ago | |
I agree, this would be great for canopy work! |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps, Emerging Tech, Marine Conservation | 1 year 9 months ago | |
Hi Ross, Where exactly did you put the UV paint? Was it on the petals or the actual middle of the flowers? I would recommend switching from sugar paste to sugar water... |
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Camera Traps, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 1 year 10 months ago |