Easy RIDER: Real-time IDentification for Ecological Research and Monitoring

昆虫是支配世界的小东西。（E.O.威尔逊）随着人们日益认识到昆虫作为几乎所有生态系统的主要组成部分的重要性，人们越来越担心昆虫的生物多样性在全球范围内下降，对我们所有人所依赖的生态系统服务造成严重后果。知识上的重大差距限制了理解变化的幅度和方向的进展，并阻碍了解决方案的设计。关于昆虫趋势的信息是高度碎片化的，时间序列数据是有限和不具代表性的，无论是在不同的昆虫群体之间（例如鳞翅目、甲虫还是苍蝇）还是在不同的地区之间。至关重要的是，我们缺乏来自世界上生物多样性最丰富地区的原始数据。例如，昆虫有助于维持热带生态系统，而热带生态系统在调节全球气候系统和为数百万人提供饮用水的水文循环方面发挥着重要作用。迄今为止，昆虫监测的进展受到许多技术挑战的阻碍。据估计，昆虫占所有已描述物种的80%左右，因此不可能在不同地区和生态系统中以一致的方式对其种群进行抽样。自动化传感器、深度学习和计算机视觉为全球范围内更标准化的昆虫监测提供了最实用、最具成本效益的解决方案。需要跨学科的研究团队来应对这一挑战。我们的项目及时地帮助英国研究人员发展新的国际伙伴关系和网络，以支持这个令人兴奋的，但新兴的，跨越工程，计算和生物学的研究领域的长期和可持续合作的发展。迫切需要建立新的研究网络和伙伴关系，以最大限度地发挥潜力，彻底改变全世界昆虫监测的范围和能力。我们将通过以下四项主要活动来开拓这一研究领域：(a)通过在线网络研讨会，以及在加拿大和欧洲举办的重点知识交流和拨款撰写研讨会，让学术界和实践者（包括主要政策制定者）进行互动、在线和面对面的交流；(b)英国与北美之间的知识交流任务，分享建立和部署传感器的实践经验，发展昆虫的深度学习和计算机视觉，以及建立数据分析管道以支持研究应用；(c)在英国、丹麦、荷兰、加拿大、美国和巴拿马进行概念验证实地试验。在一系列情况下测试自动传感器与传统方法的对比；(d)在整个项目和更广泛的倡议中传播共享知识，建立一个新的实践社区，对自动昆虫监测技术有共同的愿景，以满足其在世界范围内的变革潜力。总之，这些活动将为实现更广泛的长期目标作出重大贡献，即满足对监测世界各地昆虫的实际解决方案的迫切需求，最终支持对昆虫减少的模式和后果以及干预措施的影响进行更全面的评估。通过建立国际伙伴关系和研究网络，我们将发展可持续的合作，以解决如何量化昆虫动态和趋势的复杂性，以应对多种驱动因素，并评估这些变化的生态和人类相关的原因和后果。至关重要的是，该项目是一个重要的垫脚石，有助于确定解决全球生物多样性危机的解决方案，以及研究了解气候变化的生物影响和设计可持续农业解决方案。有效的昆虫监测是评估未来社会经济、土地利用和气候缓解政策的基础。

Insects are the little things that run the world (E.O. Wilson). 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. Major gaps in knowledge limit progress in understanding the magnitude and direction of change, and hamper the design of solutions. Information about insects trends is highly fragmented, and time-series data is restricted and unrepresentative, both between different groups of insects (e.g. lepidoptera vs beetles vs flies) and between different regions. Critically, we lack primary data from the most biodiverse parts of the world. For example, insects help sustain tropical ecosystems that play a major role in regulating the global climate system and the hydrological cycle that delivers drinking water to millions of people. To date, progress in insect monitoring has been hampered by many technical challenges. Insects are estimated to comprise around 80% of all described species, making it impossible to sample their populations in a consistent way across regions and ecosystems. Automated sensors, deep learning and computer vision offer the best practical and cost-effective solution for more standardised monitoring of insects across the globe. Inter-disciplinary research teams are needed to meet this challenge.Our project is timely to help UK researchers to develop new international partnerships and networks to underpin the development of long-term and sustainable collaborations for this exciting, yet nascent, research field that spans engineering, computing and biology. There is a pressing need for new research networks and partnerships to maximize potential to revolutionise the scope and capacity for insect monitoring worldwide. We will open up this research field through four main activities:(a) interactive, online and face-to-face engagement between academic and practitioner stakeholders, including key policy-makers, via online webinars and at focused knowledge exchange and grant-writing workshops in Canada and Europe; (b) a knowledge exchange mission between the UK and North America, to share practical experience of building and deploying sensors, develop deep learning and computer vision for insects, and to build data analysis pipelines to support research applications; (c) a proof-of-concept field trial spanning the UK, Denmark, The Netherlands, Canada, USA and Panama. Testing automated sensors against traditional approaches in a range of situation;(d) dissemination of shared learning throughout this project and wider initiatives, building a new community of practice with a shared vision for automated insect monitoring technology to meet its worldwide transformational potential.Together, these activities will make a significant contribution to the broader, long-term goal of delivering the urgent need for a practical solution to monitor insects anywhere in the world, to ultimately support a more comprehensive assessment of the patterns and consequences of insect declines, and impact of interventions. By building international partnerships and research networks we will develop sustainable collaborations to address how to quantify the complexities of insect dynamics and trends in response to multiple drivers, and evaluate the ecological and human-linked causes and consequences of the changes. Crucially, this project is a vital stepping-stone to help identify solutions for addressing the global biodiversity crisis as well as research to understand the biological impacts of climate change and to design solutions for sustainable agriculture. Effective insect monitoring underpins the evaluation of future socio-economic, land-use and climate mitigation policies.