Comparing fine-grained and coarse-grained object detection for ecology

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Tam, Jess, Kay, Justin
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Tam, Jess
Kay, Justin
author_facet Tam, Jess
Kay, Justin
contents Computer vision applications are increasingly popular for wildlife monitoring tasks. While some studies focus on the monitoring of a single species, such as a particular endangered species, others monitor larger functional groups, such as predators. In our study, we used camera trap images collected in north-western New South Wales, Australia, to investigate how model results were affected by combining multiple species in single classes, and whether the addition of negative samples can improve model performance. We found that species that benefited the most from merging into a single class were mainly species that look alike morphologically, i.e. macropods. Whereas species that looked distinctively different gave mixed results when merged, e.g. merging pigs and goats together as non-native large mammals. We also found that adding negative samples improved model performance marginally in most instances, and recommend conducting a more comprehensive study to explore whether the marginal gains were random or consistent. We suggest that practitioners could classify morphologically similar species together as a functional group or higher taxonomic group to draw ecological inferences. Nevertheless, whether to merge classes or not will depend on the ecological question to be explored.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_00018
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Comparing fine-grained and coarse-grained object detection for ecology
Tam, Jess
Kay, Justin
Quantitative Methods
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Populations and Evolution
Computer vision applications are increasingly popular for wildlife monitoring tasks. While some studies focus on the monitoring of a single species, such as a particular endangered species, others monitor larger functional groups, such as predators. In our study, we used camera trap images collected in north-western New South Wales, Australia, to investigate how model results were affected by combining multiple species in single classes, and whether the addition of negative samples can improve model performance. We found that species that benefited the most from merging into a single class were mainly species that look alike morphologically, i.e. macropods. Whereas species that looked distinctively different gave mixed results when merged, e.g. merging pigs and goats together as non-native large mammals. We also found that adding negative samples improved model performance marginally in most instances, and recommend conducting a more comprehensive study to explore whether the marginal gains were random or consistent. We suggest that practitioners could classify morphologically similar species together as a functional group or higher taxonomic group to draw ecological inferences. Nevertheless, whether to merge classes or not will depend on the ecological question to be explored.
title Comparing fine-grained and coarse-grained object detection for ecology
topic Quantitative Methods
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Populations and Evolution
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.00018