ITR: Advanced Imaging and Information Technology for Assessing the Ecological and Economic Impact of Brazilian Free-Tailed Bats on Agroecosystems

ITR：先进成像和信息技术，用于评估巴西无尾蝙蝠对农业生态系统的生态和经济影响

• 批准号: 0326483
• 负责人: Thomas Kunz
• 金额: $ 240万
• 依托单位: Trustees of Boston University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-09-15 至 2009-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0326483&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: ITR; Advanced; Imaging; Information; Technology

Intellectual Merit of the Proposed ActivityMillions of Brazilian free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) voraciously consume enormous quantities of insects each summer night throughout the southwestern United States. These bats provide an agricultural pest control service little understood by the scientific community and policy makers. The proposed effort will evaluate the nationwide ecological and economic impact of this species on both natural and agricultural ecosystems. The project is innovative in its development of information technology and unique in its complexity and scale. It requires the collaborative efforts of computer scientists, applied mathematicians, meteorologists, ecologists, and ecological economists. Proposed activities involve:1. Sensing Technologies.-Design, develop, deploy, and evaluate algorithms and systems for thermal, ultrasonic, and radar sensing of millions of bats and insect pests. Such algorithms and systems currently do not exist but are crucial for providing a reliable census of the nationwide free-tailed bat populations and processes. Computer vision techniques will be developed to analyze nightly emergence, flight paths, and foraging behaviors of individuals and groups of bats.2. Computational Modeling.-Design, develop, solve, and validate computational models of the agricultural-insects-bats system across temporal and spatial scales. Processes at lower levels of organization, such as the individual bat and its physiological functions, will be analyzed to solve problems posed at higher ecological levels of organization from the population to the landscape. Local population models for particular caves or bridges will be generalized to a spatially explicit regional model for Texas, and then to a spatially explicit landscape model that describes the nationwide impact of Brazilian free-tailed bats on agricultural ecosystems. Currently, no complete individual or population life-history models exist for free-tailed bats nor, indeed, for any bat species, in spite of the fact bats are ubiquitous throughout the world and are distinguished as the second largest order of mammals.3. System Integration.-The proposed models will be integrated using both conceptual and spatial hierarchies. Results provided by the sensing technologies will be combined to represent the processes of foraging and migration. The integration of these outcomes as well as molecular tools (such as fecal DNA), entomological and agricultural information, energetics, meteorological and toxicological databases, will provide input parameters and validation data to computational models of bat populations. The models will integrate the interdependencies of dietary factors, energy consumption and allocation, weather patterns, effects of toxicants, etc. on birth and mortality rates and population sizes of bats and their prey.Broader Impacts Resulting from the Proposed ActivityThe importance of natural pest-control services becomes evident often only when they are degraded or eliminated by human activity. The proposed research will provide realistic estimates of the economic impact of Brazilian free-tailed bats. The proposed techniques may generalize to other species and thus have a broad impact in the fields of biology, ecology, ecological economics, and agriculture. The proposed methods of image analysis may apply to other large-scale video tracking applications, for instance, the analysis of group behavior of other bat species, insects, herding mammals (e.g., seals, caribou), colonial seabirds, the analysis of human crowd behavior, data mining of video of human motion, and video surveillance for homeland security. An important impact of the proposed research on society will be the development appropriate policy responses by federal, state, or local authorities based on the fundamentally improved understanding of the underlying biological and economic principles of natural pest control. The proposed effort addresses the goals of the ITR Program in a number of ways. It is multidisciplinary in nature, providing a new bridge between the fields of computational sciences and ecology. This may lead to novel, unanticipated insights and technologies in both fields. The proposed effort will train students in biology and computer science to fully integrate information technology and science. Graduate and undergraduate students from both disciplines will learn to conduct joint field experiments, analyze data, and work with computational models. The projects in computer science that are inspired by questions in biology promise to have a special appeal to women, and we expect that our project will encourage more women to explore the computational aspects of biology.

拟议活动的智力价值 每年夏夜，美国西南部数以百万计的巴西无尾蝙蝠（Tadarida brasiliensis）都会贪婪地捕食大量昆虫。 这些蝙蝠提供了科学界和政策制定者知之甚少的农业害虫防治服务。 拟议的工作将评估该物种对自然和农业生态系统的全国生态和经济影响。该项目在信息技术的发展上具有创新性，其复杂性和规模也独一无二。 它需要计算机科学家、应用数学家、气象学家、生态学家和生态经济学家的共同努力。 拟议的活动包括：1． 传感技术-设计、开发、部署和评估对数百万只蝙蝠和害虫进行热、超声波和雷达传感的算法和系统。 这样的算法和系统目前还不存在，但对于提供全国无尾蝙蝠种群和过程的可靠普查至关重要。 将开发计算机视觉技术来分析蝙蝠个体和群体的夜间出现、飞行路径和觅食行为。2． 计算建模。-设计、开发、解决和验证跨时间和空间尺度的农业昆虫蝙蝠系统的计算模型。 将分析较低组织层次的过程，例如单个蝙蝠及其生理功能，以解决从种群到景观的较高生态组织层次所提出的问题。 特定洞穴或桥梁的当地人口模型将推广到德克萨斯州的空间明确的区域模型，然后推广到描述巴西无尾蝙蝠对农业生态系统的全国影响的空间明确的景观模型。目前，尽管蝙蝠在世界各地普遍存在，并且被认为是哺乳动物的第二大目，但对于无尾蝙蝠或任何蝙蝠物种，目前尚不存在完整的个体或群体生活史模型。3。 系统集成-所提出的模型将使用概念和空间层次结构进行集成。传感技术提供的结果将被组合起来代表觅食和迁徙的过程。这些结果以及分子工具（如粪便 DNA）、昆虫学和农业信息、能量学、气象和毒理学数据库的整合将为蝙蝠种群的计算模型提供输入参数和验证数据。 这些模型将整合饮食因素、能源消耗和分配、天气模式、有毒物质的影响等对蝙蝠及其猎物的出生率和死亡率以及种群规模的相互依赖性。拟议活动产生的更广泛影响只有当自然害虫防治服务被人类活动退化或消除时，它们的重要性才会变得明显。 拟议的研究将为巴西无尾蝙蝠的经济影响提供现实的估计。 所提出的技术可以推广到其他物种，从而在生物学、生态学、生态经济学和农业领域产生广泛的影响。所提出的图像分析方法可以应用于其他大规模视频跟踪应用，例如，其他蝙蝠物种、昆虫、牧群哺乳动物（例如海豹、驯鹿）、殖民地海鸟的群体行为分析、人群行为分析、人类运动视频的数据挖掘以及国土安全视频监控。 拟议研究对社会的一个重要影响将是联邦、州或地方当局根据对自然害虫控制的基本生物学和经济原理的根本改进的理解，制定适当的政策反应。拟议的工作以多种方式实现 ITR 计划的目标。 它本质上是多学科的，在计算科学和生态学领域之间架起了一座新的桥梁。 这可能会在这两个领域带来新颖的、意想不到的见解和技术。拟议的工作将培训生物学和计算机科学专业的学生，​​使其充分整合信息技术和科学。 这两个学科的研究生和本科生将学习进行联合现场实验、分析数据和使用计算模型。受生物学问题启发的计算机科学项目有望对女性产生特殊的吸引力，我们希望我们的项目将鼓励更多女性探索生物学的计算方面。