One day in late summer, we were picking the matured figs at the back of our garden and our harvest was accompanied by louder-than-usual buzzing sounds. Around the overripe figs flew a lot of insects and landed on these already opened fruits: honey bees (Apis mellifera) and some fly species, such as the locust blowfly …
Background Biodiversity decline disproportionally affects hyperdiverse, yet low and middle-income, tropical regions, and Lepidoptera are among the most impacted taxa. Whereas monitoring in these countries is essential, only implementing low-cost solutions can guarantee success. The recent automatic image analysing methods allow for fast and low-cost solutions in monitoring biodiversity. Lepidoptera monitoring is relatively simple and …
Read more “Data digging from photographs of moths using deep-learning-based object detection”
Background Pesticides are one of the most important anthropogenic-related stressors. In times of global pollinator decline, the role of integrated farming and that of urban gardens in supporting wild pollinators is becoming increasingly important. The gardens could be hotspots of biodiversity and could give refuge for pollinators in urban areas. The indicators of these gardens’ …
Background In order to understand the processes behind the pollinator declines, besides monitoring species occurrences, we also have to focus on monitoring interactions. In addition to traditional trapping and observation methods, we should develop fast, reliable, and cheap automated methods which are capable of monitoring both species occurrences and interactions. Using cutting-edge tools in ecology, …
Background In recent decades, the populations of pollinators have been declining worldwide. This is increased by anthropogenic background factors such as agrochemical pollution, degradation of natural habitats, noise, dust and heavy metal loads from roads. Anthropogenic noise is a type of pollution that has so far been little studied, but it has been proven to …