Hi!

The CAMPHIBIAN project aims at developing an underwater camera trap primarily targeting amphibian such as newts, but co-occurring taxa are recorded as well such as frogs, grass snake and aquatic invertebrates (e.g. water scorpions, backswimmers, water beetles, horse leech, pond snail...) based on field trials in NW Europe.  

The device works more like a photo booth than a camera trap: individuals are freely entering and leaving a tunnel where shooting is done in a standardized way in terms of distance, background, light and image/video quality. This greatly improves the potential for species determination or individuation and reduces the required number of images to train a classifier (e.g. RCNN). The sensitivity of the motion detection can be adjusted to reduce false triggering. Visible and/or near IR lighting can be used within the tunnel depending the need of color images, and the sensitivity of species to these wavelengths.  

A web app has been developed specifically to support the processing of observations produced by the device. 

The CAMPHIBIAN project includes the production of few units that will be made available for early users with the aim to widen the targeted aquatic species and habitat types worldwide. 

Would you be interested to test the device in 2024 on your study site? Please fill in the form here below! 

https://survey.list.lu/index.php/757563?lang=en