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RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)
Contents Vol 38(6)

Image-based recognition of parasitoid wasps using advanced neural networks

Hossein Shirali https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6884-4263 A * , Jeremy Hübner https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5624-8573 B * , Robin Both A , Michael Raupach https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8299-6697 B , Markus Reischl https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7780-6374 A , Stefan Schmidt https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5751-8706 C and Christian Pylatiuk https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3507-7134 A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Institute for Automation and Applied Informatics (IAI), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), D-76149 Karlsruhe, Germany.

B Zoologische Staatssammlung München, Münchhausenstraße 21, D-81247 Munich, Germany.

C Deceased. Formerly at Zoologische Staatssammlung München, Münchhausenstraße 21, D-81247 Munich, Germany.

* Correspondence to: hossein.shirali@kit.edu, miomio9237@gmail.com

Handling Editor: Gonzalo Giribet

Invertebrate Systematics 38, IS24011 https://doi.org/10.1071/IS24011
Submitted: 30 January 2024  Accepted: 8 May 2024  Published: 5 June 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Hymenoptera has some of the highest diversity and number of individuals among insects. Many of these species potentially play key roles as food sources, pest controllers and pollinators. However, little is known about the diversity and biology and ~80% of the species have not yet been described. Classical taxonomy based on morphology is a rather slow process but DNA barcoding has already brought considerable progress in identification. Innovative methods such as image-based identification and automation can further speed up the process. We present a proof of concept for image data recognition of a parasitic wasp family, the Diapriidae (Hymenoptera), obtained as part of the GBOL III project. These tiny (1.2–4.5 mm) wasps were photographed and identified using DNA barcoding to provide a solid ground truth for training a neural network. Taxonomic identification was used down to the genus level. Subsequently, three different neural network architectures were trained, evaluated and optimised. As a result, 11 different genera of diaprids and one mixed group of ‘other Hymenoptera’ can be classified with an average accuracy of 96%. Additionally, the sex of the specimen can be classified automatically with an accuracy of >97%.

Keywords: AI, artificial intelligence, biodiversity, Diapriidae, DNA barcoding, genus classification, Hymenoptera, image-based identification, integrative taxonomy, machine learning, neural network architectures, taxonomic identification.

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