Laser diagnostics for comparative seasonal diversity of insects

The current decline of insect- and pollinator diversity poses a threat to our ecosystems and food production security.

Current survey methods based on traps and sweep nets are biased, invasive, and require tedious manual taxonomic analysis. This greatly limits the temporal- and spatial resolution and coverage of current sampling.

To toubleshoot ecosystems and measure the landscape´s impact on insect diversity we need a grid of “insect species multimeters” enabling continuous detection.

For the last decade, I have developed photonic monitoring of insects and I am currently the most cited within the field (web-of-science). We can detect some 105 insects and discriminate 103 distinct clusters daily.

We have shown that the number of clusters is habitat specific and independent from abundance, and that clusters correlates with conventional taxonomic diversity estimates.

To advance this field my group will:Develop a model of light scattering by flying insects to improve signal interpretationUse model to optimize wavelength- and polarization bands for species differentiationDevelop 6 replicas of a compact, weatherproof, autonomous, eyesafe ento lidarValidate scattering models on in vivo/ex vivo insects in laboratoryDevelop robust lidar data pipelines and diversity measuresReverse model to interpret field lidar dataMonitor insect in situ for 2-years at 6 nodes for comparative studiesBuild database with 109 observations, reflecting diversity in distinct habitats, weathers and seasons