A Multispectral Backscattered Light Recorder of Insects’ Wingbeats

Abstract

Most reported optical recorders of the wingbeat of insects are based on the so-called extinction light, which is the variation of light in the receiver due to the cast shadow of the insect’s wings and main body. In this type of recording devices, the emitter uses light and is placed opposite to the receiver, which is usually a single (or multiple) photodiode. In this work, we present a different kind of wingbeat sensor and its associated recorder that aims to extract a deeper representational signal of the wingbeat event and color characterization of the main body of the insect, namely: a) we record the backscattered light that is richer in harmonics than the extinction light, b) we use three different spectral bands, i.e., a multispectral approach that aims to grasp the melanization and microstructural and color features of the wing and body of the insects, and c) we average at the receiver’s level the backscattered signal from many LEDs that illuminate the wingbeating insect from multiple orientations and thus offer a smoother and more complete signal than one based on a single snapshot. We present all the necessary details to reproduce the device and we analyze many insects of interest like the bee Apis mellifera, the wasp Polistes gallicus, and some insects whose wingbeating characteristics are pending in the current literature, like Drosophila suzukii and Zaprionus, another member of the drosophilidae family.

An Opto-Electronic Sensor-Ring to Detect Arthropods of Significantly Different Body Sizes

“…Concerning flying insects, mostly fruitflies were detected by using opto-electronic sensors in McPhail traps. They had an evolution from the simpler infrared beams to the more sophisticated ones (see in Table 1: Potamitis, Rigakis, Vidakis, Petousis and Weber [20]), which was based on the attributes of arthropods' wingbeats [21,28,29]. The species selectivity is a very big step in automatic monitoring of arthropods, since both practical IPM experts and field ecologists are interested in target pest species or the population dynamics of a particular species.…”

Signal Processing and Analysis of Electrical Circuit

“…A multispectral backscattered light recorder of insects' wingbeats was presented in the paper [4]. The proposed device extracted a signal of the wingbeat event and color characterization of the insect.…”

“…The authors of the paper analyzed the following insects: the bee (Apis mellifera) and the wasp (Polistes gallicus) [4]. A 13-bit 3 MS/s asynchronous SAR ADC with a passive resistor was described [5].…”

Automatic Field Detection of Western Corn Rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera; Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) with a New Probe

“…In the case of the KLP trap, using photography is hardly possible; therefore, flying or falling insects have to be detected. For flying insects, opto-electronic devices such as those using laser beam [ 29 ] and infrared light [ 30 , 31 ] are common. In the case of these sensors, although good results have been achieved in distinguishing different species flying into the traps, for example, based on wingbeat frequency, e.g., [ 32 ], the problem is usually that most of the sensors are not species-specific.…”