As camera technology advances and the power of AI evolves, are we reaching a point where technology can identify species for us?

The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology has had success using machine learning to successfully identify plants, moths and ground beetles. In 2023 they started investigating the possibility of using these methods to identify earthworms from photographs.

Traditionally, British earthworms could only be identified through observation of small morphological features using a microscope, with previous attempts to use field characters (such as colour and size) proving unreliable.

The Earthworm Image Recognition Project was a pilot project that gathered over 11,000 images of live earthworms that were subsequently identified using traditional methods. This image library was used to train an earthworm ID algorithm. This event will present the methodology, successes, lessons learned and limitations of the pilot project.

The event will feature two speaker presentations and speaker Q&A segments:

1. Photographing Britain's Earthworms with Keiron Derek Brown (Biological Recording Company)
2. Algorithm: EarthwormID with Dr Tom August (UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology)

The live audience will have the opportunity to submit their questions to our speakers in a Q&A segments following each presentation.

The presentations will be recorded and shared with those who booked alongside Q&A transcripts and any relevant links following the event.

This event is being delivered by the Biological Recording Company in partnership with the Earthworm Society of Britain and UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.