Ever seen an image of an animal and wondered, “What is that?” TaxaBind, a new tool developed by computer scientists in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, can sate that curiosity and more.
TaxaBind addresses the need for more robust and unified approaches to ecological problems by combining multiple models to perform species classification (What kind of bear is this?), distribution mapping (Where are the cardinals?), and other tasks related to ecology. The tool can also be used as a starting point for larger studies related to ecological modeling, which scientists might use to predict shifts in plant and animal populations, climate change effects or the impacts of human activities on ecosystems.
Srikumar Sastry, the lead author on the project, presented TaxaBind March 2-3 at the IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision in Tucson, Ariz.
“With TaxaBind we’re unlocking the potential of multiple modalities in the ecological domain,” Sastry said.
Sastry, a graduate student working with Nathan Jacobs, a professor of computer science and engineering, used an innovative technique known as multimodal patching to distill information from different modalities into one binding modality. Sastry describes it as the “mutual friend” that connects and maintains interaction among the other five modalities.
Read more on the McKelvey School of Engineering website.
