Monitoring and measuring wild animals without the need for capture

An award is made to the University of Idaho to engineer an instrument that uses advances in artificial intelligence to identify small mammal species, discriminate among individuals, and measure body weight and morphological traits in real-time. Despite their abundance and applied importance as agricultural pests and reservoirs of human infectious disease, the methods used to study small mammals in the wild have changed little over time and generally require that individual animals are captured and handled by well-trained and permitted research staff. By removing this requirement, the instrument developed by this project will reduce research costs and increase the efficiency, pace and extent of data collection in both the pure and applied biological sciences. Beyond advancing research instrumentation, work on this project will enhance science education at the interface of artificial intelligence, engineering, and biology through partnerships with K-12 schools and integration into senior design projects for engineering students at the University of Idaho. By enabling automated monitoring of wild animals, the proposed work will enhance biological research capacity in three ways. First, the cost and labor required for data collection will be vastly reduced, increasing sample sizes and the geographic and temporal scope of study. Second, regulatory obstacles and safety concerns to studying threatened or endangered species will be reduced because animals need not be captured and handled. Third, because the instrument is capable of autonomous operation and data transmission for extended periods of time, it will facilitate research in harsh or dangerous environments. Instrument adoption by researchers in the biological sciences will be facilitated by instrument loan to Idaho Department of Fish and Game for use in small mammal surveys and through the donation of ten instruments to a non-profit selected through a merit-based application process. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.