Radar Can Tell the Difference Between Insect Species

Bees and other pollinating insects play vital roles in food webs and crop pollination, yet monitoring them has proved difficult. That’s why researchers have developed a radar system that could lead to a cost-effective, noninvasive way to track pollinators. Traditionally, identifying pollinators has proven tricky and time-consuming, and typically requires capturing and killing insects to get a close look at them. To find a better way to monitor pollinators , scientists are developing vision systems that use machine learning to automatically classify insects. However, these machine learning systems face a major limitation when acquiring usable images, because of issues such as variable lighting, poor weather, and cluttered backgrounds—not to mention that many insects can just fly away when approached. That’s why researchers based in Europe instead analyzed radar scans of insects. It’s not a new idea—scientists have used radar for decades to study migratory insects. However, that research was mostly…