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discussion / Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects  / 9 March 2023

Camera to follow wasps/attach on wasps

Shweta

Shweta

I am a researcher working on potter wasps nesting behavior based in Bangalore in India.

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I am researching on the nesting on potter wasps in Bangalore, India. I have to follow nesting wasps to observe all its activities including where it takes rest at night. I am focussing my study on the genus called Phimenes and Delta, which are fairly large bodied and easy to follow and track (compared to smaller potter wasps). But I still lose track of the wasps easily because they fly so fast. 

I am hoping you could give me some camera methods to either follow the flying wasps by a camera like a drone option or maybe is there a camera we can fix to the tiny insect body which will then record where it goes to? 

Also, do you have cameras which we can place inside their small nests which will record the activities happening inside their nests as the young larva grows and becomes an adult? (These are all activities that have never been recorded till now and will greatly help the scientific community). Also, no one knows the manner in which they paralyze their prey which would be great to track with cameras.



Tom August
@tom_august  | he/him
Computational ecologist with interests in computer vision, citizen science, open science, drones, acoustics, data viz, software engineering, public engagement
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10 March 2023 9:36am

I think @Lars_Holst_Hansen is on point here. It sounds like what you are trying to do is track the insects, and the methods shown in the presentation are best for that.

The cameras would work best where you can have them cameras stationary, looking at the wasps. So they might be good for counting individuals leaving and entering the nest. Cameras inside the nest face a number of challenges. You woud need to ensure that there was good lighting inside the nest for the camera to see, and you would need to make sure that all the action was in focus of the camera. Assuming that is the case you could create an algorithm to track individuals and even look to train an algorithm to identify behaviours, but this is likely to take a lot of work. If you only have a small number of nests, then manual analysis of the recordings may be more cost-effective.