Humbug II

Enabling large-scale acoustic monitoring for invasive insect species

Invasive insect species have the potential to outcompete or predate native species and bring disease. 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. Such technology is ideally suited for surveillance of invasive species, where the species density is initially low, meaning surveillance effort can be costly and uncertain but still has to be balanced against the potential economic cost of successful invasion.

The Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) ranks the United Kingdom in the lowest 12% of global countries [1] and the most recent “State of Nature” report shows the decline in biodiversity is ongoing, with birds, amphibians, reptiles and terrestrial mammals all showing significant decline. Habitat loss, intensive farming and climate change are cited as the biggest drivers but there are other risks as the world becomes more connected. Invasive species have the potential to outcompete or predate native species (e.g. the Asian Hornet, Vespa vetulina, Harlequin ladybird, Harmonia axyridis), expand their range unchecked by natural predators (e.g. Box tree moth, Cydalima perspectalis), and bring disease (e.g. the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus)

Aims and objectives

Working with nationally and internationally recognised biodiversity experts and mosquito control experts (UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Mosquito Control Service - Catalan Government), stakeholder representatives (the British Bee Keepers Association), and commercial partners (Mind Foundry, Aioi R&D Lab), the aim of this project is to create and demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of a mobile acoustic sensing system suitable for monitoring invasive species that threaten the UK’s biodiversity. We will leverage our experience in developing and deploying a mosquito species acoustic monitoring system in the HumBug project, to develop a general-purpose acoustic sensing system which can be tuned to specific invading species including the Asian tiger mosquito and Asian Hornet.

As a whole, the project embodies key technology advances including i) unified on-device machine learning model integration on smartphones across mobile operating systems; ii) improved data/model interoperability between the sensing system (i.e. the smartphone) and the cloud; and iii) trustworthy post-acquisition processing techniques with crowdsourced noisy acoustic data. The project will deliver new collaborations with stakeholders to understand their needs and test the capabilities of the system to increase its uptake, with demonstration through innovative pilot applications of acoustic sensing of invasive insect species (Asian tiger mosquitoes, Asian hornets).

Potential applications and benefits

The system will enhance the capabilities of environmental monitoring organisations in efficiently mapping the distribution of concerned species, facilitating the evaluation of the effectiveness of interventions for improving biodiversity. We envision that the project’s use cases will expand beyond the two pilot applications, via forging new partnerships and sharing learned lessons with different sectors and other biodiversity monitoring projects, to significantly improve our ability to assess habitat connectivity and collective understanding of species distribution and movement at regional and national scales.