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ESIDE: A computationally intelligent method to identify earthworm species (E. fetida) from digital images: Application in taxonomy.

Authors :
Andleeb S
Abbasi WA
Ghulam Mustafa R
Islam GU
Naseer A
Shafique I
Parween A
Shaheen B
Shafiq M
Altaf M
Ali Abbas S
Source :
PloS one [PLoS One] 2021 Sep 16; Vol. 16 (9), pp. e0255674. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Sep 16 (Print Publication: 2021).
Publication Year :
2021

Abstract

Earthworms (Crassiclitellata) being ecosystem engineers significantly affect the physical, chemical, and biological properties of the soil by recycling organic material, increasing nutrient availability, and improving soil structure. The efficiency of earthworms in ecology varies along with species. Therefore, the role of taxonomy in earthworm study is significant. The taxonomy of earthworms cannot reliably be established through morphological characteristics because the small and simple body plan of the earthworm does not have anatomical complex and highly specialized structures. Recently, molecular techniques have been adopted to accurately classify the earthworm species but these techniques are time-consuming and costly. To combat this issue, in this study, we propose a machine learning-based earthworm species identification model that uses digital images of earthworms. We performed a stringent performance evaluation not only through 10-fold cross-validation and on an external validation dataset but also in real settings by involving an experienced taxonomist. In all the evaluation settings, our proposed model has given state-of-the-art performance and justified its use to aid earthworm taxonomy studies. We made this model openly accessible through a cloud-based webserver and python code available at https://sites.google.com/view/wajidarshad/software and https://github.com/wajidarshad/ESIDE.<br />Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
1932-6203
Volume :
16
Issue :
9
Database :
MEDLINE
Journal :
PloS one
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
34529673
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255674