Species-level image classification with convolutional neural network enables insect identification from habitus images.

Changes in insect biomass, abundance, and diversity are challenging to track at sufficient spatial, temporal, and taxonomic resolution. Camera traps can capture habitus images of ground-dwelling insects. However, currently sampling involves manually detecting and identifying specimens. Here, we test whether a convolutional neural network (CNN) can classify habitus images of ground beetles to species level, and estimate how correct classification relates to body size, number of species inside genera, and species identity.We created an image database of 65,841 museum specimens comprising 361 carabid beetle species from the British Isles and fine-tuned the parameters of a pretrained CNN from a training dataset. By summing up class confidence values within genus, tribe, and subfamily and setting a confidence threshold, we trade-off between classification accuracy, precision, and recall and taxonomic resolution.The CNN classified 51.9% of 19,164 test images correctly to species level and 74.9% to genus level. Average classification recall on species level was 50.7%. Applying a threshold of 0.5 increased the average classification recall to 74.6% at the expense of taxonomic resolution. Higher top value from the output layer and larger sized species were more often classified correctly, as were images of species in genera with few species.Fine-tuning enabled us to classify images with a high mean recall for the whole test dataset to species or higher taxonomic levels, however, with high variability. This indicates that some species are more difficult to identify because of properties such as their body size or the number of related species.Together, species-level image classification of arthropods from museum collections and ecological monitoring can substantially increase the amount of occurrence data that can feasibly be collected. These tools thus provide new opportunities in understanding and predicting ecological responses to environmental change.

Ecological interactions in the Scratchpads virtual research environment.

BACKGROUND: The Natural History Museum, London has a number of online databases that describe interactions between species, including the HOSTS database of lepidopteran host plants (Robinson et al. 2010) and a database of Dipterocarp Seed Predators. These databases were generally bespoke software, which has increased the technical work necessary to sustain these resources. The decision was taken to migrate these to either the Scratchpads Virtual Research Environment (VRE) (Smith et al. 2011) or to the museum's Data Portal (Scott et al. 2019), depending on the complexity of the existing resource, as both are being sustained by the Informatics Group at the Natural History Museum, London. Resources that can be best represented as a single table were moved to the Data Portal, while those best represented in a relational model were transferred to Scratchpads. In addition, the Phthiraptera.info Scratchpad (Smith and Broom 2019), which already contained ecological interaction data, was migrated to the new system. NEW INFORMATION: This paper describes the implementation within the Scratchpads VRE of a new ecological interactions module that is capable of handling the needs of these projects, while at the same time is flexible to handle the needs of future projects with different data sources.

Haplopacha (Lepidoptera: Lasiocampidae) reviewed: four new species, first descriptions of the genitalia of both sexes, and unique alar scale organs.

The collection of five specimens of Haplopacha at Ndumo Nature Reserve in South Africa highlights unknown species diversity in the monotypic genus. A total of four new species; H. riftensis sp. nov., H. tangani sp. nov., H. lunata sp. nov. and H. ndoumoi sp. nov., were identified in the Natural History Museum of London collection and the study of fresh specimens also revealed the presence of uniquely characteristic alar scale patches absent from the original species description of the genus type species H. cinerea. Based on the new species the descriptions of Haplopacha is amended. The identification of the new species was done using conventional light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy of the general morphology, wing venation and genitalia observations.

IMp: The customizable LEGO(®) Pinned Insect Manipulator.

We present a pinned insect manipulator (IMp) constructed of LEGO® building bricks with two axes of movement and two axes of rotation. In addition we present three variants of the IMp to emphasise the modular design, which facilitates resizing to meet the full range of pinned insect specimens, is fully customizable, collapsible, affordable and does not require specialist tools or knowledge to assemble.

Chambered cuticle, pellicles, strange sensilla, and extraordinary muscle arrangements: a study of the micropterigid larval trunk (Lepidoptera: Micropterigidae).

The larvsal trunk wall of Sabatinca chalcophanes (Meyrick, 1885), representing the "sabatincoid morphotype," is described (brightfield and polarization microscopies, scanning and transmission electron microscopies). Eight sensillum types are identified, including four previously undescribed subventral and ventral kinds. The cuticle is nonsolid, the exocuticle being chambered in a honeycomb-like fashion with chamber walls apparently secreted along epidermal cells boundaries. The chamber contents open to the exterior via minute pores in the chamber roofs. A space between endo and exocuticle communicates with the chamber interiors via pores in the chamber floors; the dense endocuticular surface in places form thickened domes. On the lower trunk region, lateral chamber walls are highly porous (lattice like), hence their contents are continuous; individual chamber roofs here are markedly convex, and the external trunk surface, therefore, papillate. The trunk surface is more or less completely covered by a pellicle, likely formed by exudates from the exocuticular chambers. Unusually for Lepidoptera all trunk muscles are slender strands covering a modest proportion of the inner trunk surface. Conspicuous insertion "nodes" are located at lateral and ventral segmental boundaries, ventromedially near segmental midlengths, and paramedially on the dorsum behind segmental midlengths. Overall similar cuticular specializations are also present in the distantly related Micropterix, strongly supporting micropterigid monophyly.

Early leaf miners and the ground plan of the lepidopteran larval trunk: caterpillar morphology of the basal moths Heterobathmia, Eriocrania, and Acanthopteroctetes.

The larval trunk morphology including chaetotaxy, locomotory structures, and trunk musculature of Heterobathmia pseuderiocrania, Eriocrania cicatricella, and Acanthopteroctetes unifascia is described using conventional light, polarization, and scanning electron microscopy. The ground plan morphology of the lepidopteran larva and neolepidopteran caterpillar is discussed in light of the life history succession from free soil dwelling organism to endophagous and finally to a primarily free living, angiosperm associated organism. I suggest that the larval morphology is argued to be strongly influenced by the shift in number of surfaces present in the larval environment. Especially the environment of the endophagous species, where the upper surface of the leaf mine is linked to the presence of dorsal locomotory structures such as the retractable calli and dorsal friction patches is proposed to have had a significant impact on the morphology and locomotory mechnism of the lepidopteran caterpillar. The chaetotaxy of the lepidopteran ground plan is found to be simple, consisting only of primary and secondary tactile setae and segmental proprioceptors. The presumption of Gerasimov ([1935] Zool Anz 112:177-194) that MXD1 of the prothorax is a shifted mesothoracic MD setae is supported. I suggest that the serial arrangement of the proprioceptors MD1, present on all trunk segments except the prothorax, and a trisetous MV group on all the thoracic segments is part of the lepidopteran larval ground plan. The absence of apodeme structures associated with trunk musculature in the nonglossatans suggests that this is an autapomorphic character of the Lepidoptera and it is further found to have been influential in the evolution of the typical caterpillar trunk. The attachments of the thoracic muscles directly to the trunk integument, suggest that the apodemal structures ancestral to the Amphiesmenoptera have been reduced in the Lepidoptera. Within the non-Neolepidoptera, the lifehistory shift may have resulted in reduction of the dorsal locomotory structures, such as calli. The abdominal musculature and structural similarities further suggest that the ventral calli are structural predecessors to the crotchet bearing proleg of the "typical caterpillar."

Kauri seeds and larval somersaults: the larval trunk of the seed mining basal moth Agathiphaga vitensis (Lepidoptera: Agathiphagidae).

The trunk morphology of the larvae of the kauri pine (Agathis) seed infesting moth Agathiphaga is described using conventional, polarization, and scanning electron microscopy. The pine seed chamber formed by the larva is also described and commented on. The simple larval chaetotaxy includes more of the minute posture sensing setae, proprioceptors, than expected from the lepidopteran larval ground plan. The excess of proprioceptors is suggested to be necessary for sensory input concerning the larval posture within the seed chamber. The trunk musculature includes an autapomorphic radial ventral musculature made up of unique multisegmental muscles. The combined presence of additional proprioceptors and the unique ventral musculature is proposed to be related to the larval movement within the confined space of the seed chamber, especially to a proposed somersault movement that allows the larva to orientate itself within the chamber.

Fore tarsus attachment device of the male scuttle fly, Aenigmatias lubbockii.

The fore tarsus of the male scuttle fly, Aenigmatias lubbockii (Verrall) (Diptera: Phoridae), is broad and equipped with flattened and apically truncated (FAT) setae on the ventral surface, which are suggested to be involved in the intraspecific phoretic behaviour including airlifting and dispersal of the female. The combination of FAT setae on the male fore tarsi and regularly arranged microtrichia on the female thoracic surfaces is suggested to form a combination of an adhesive structure and possibly a fastener system. Comparisons are made to Puliciphora borinquenensis (Wheeler), which also has apterous females and male-facilitated female dispersal, but where fore tarsal FAT setae are absent.