Serge Wich, Marc Ancrenaz, Benoit Goossens, Molly Hennekam, Sol Milne, David Burslem, Cheryl Knott, Julien Martin, Paul Fergus
Traditional orangutan distribution and density monitoring requires costly line transect methods on the ground to detect their nests. Recently researchers have started to use unoccupied aerial vehicles, hereafter referred to as drones, to collect such data faster. However, manually inspecting the images acquired by the drone is time-consuming and hence costly. This study explored a deep learning method for the automated detection of orangutan nests in drone-captured aerial images, which can significantly improve the efficiency of orangutan monitoring efforts. The YOLO v10 model was trained using 868 images containing 1568 annotated orangutan nests collected from sites in Sabah, Malaysia, and Sumatra, Indonesia. Images were captured using multirotor and fixed-wing drones at varying altitudes. The model was trained using a transfer learning approach and achieved a mean Average Precision (mAP) of 0.831. The model was subsequently tested on two independent data sets with results showing a precision of 0.98 and recall of 0.88 for a multirotor drone and precision of 0.98 and a recall of 0.71 for a fixed-wing drone which has the benefit of being able to have longer duration flights. The high precision values indicate the model's accuracy in identifying true nest locations, while the recall values demonstrate its ability to detect a significant portion of the nests present in the images. The study highlights how using drones for data collection can reduce survey times compared to ground surveys, and the automation of nest detection further enhances the efficiency of drone surveys. However, the model's recall, especially for fixed-wing drone data, could be improved to ensure accurate population trend analyses. Further research should focus on expanding training data sets and refining models to account for different camera systems and environmental conditions.
{"title":"Using Deep Learning to Automate Orangutan Nest Detections on Aerial Images Collected With Drones","authors":"Serge Wich, Marc Ancrenaz, Benoit Goossens, Molly Hennekam, Sol Milne, David Burslem, Cheryl Knott, Julien Martin, Paul Fergus","doi":"10.1002/ajp.70100","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ajp.70100","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Traditional orangutan distribution and density monitoring requires costly line transect methods on the ground to detect their nests. Recently researchers have started to use unoccupied aerial vehicles, hereafter referred to as drones, to collect such data faster. However, manually inspecting the images acquired by the drone is time-consuming and hence costly. This study explored a deep learning method for the automated detection of orangutan nests in drone-captured aerial images, which can significantly improve the efficiency of orangutan monitoring efforts. The YOLO v10 model was trained using 868 images containing 1568 annotated orangutan nests collected from sites in Sabah, Malaysia, and Sumatra, Indonesia. Images were captured using multirotor and fixed-wing drones at varying altitudes. The model was trained using a transfer learning approach and achieved a mean Average Precision (mAP) of 0.831. The model was subsequently tested on two independent data sets with results showing a precision of 0.98 and recall of 0.88 for a multirotor drone and precision of 0.98 and a recall of 0.71 for a fixed-wing drone which has the benefit of being able to have longer duration flights. The high precision values indicate the model's accuracy in identifying true nest locations, while the recall values demonstrate its ability to detect a significant portion of the nests present in the images. The study highlights how using drones for data collection can reduce survey times compared to ground surveys, and the automation of nest detection further enhances the efficiency of drone surveys. However, the model's recall, especially for fixed-wing drone data, could be improved to ensure accurate population trend analyses. Further research should focus on expanding training data sets and refining models to account for different camera systems and environmental conditions.</p>","PeriodicalId":7662,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Primatology","volume":"87 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12683230/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145699648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
John W. Terbot II, Vivak Soni, Cyril J. Versoza, Mark Milhaven, Adriana Calahorra-Oliart, Devangana Shah, Susanne P. Pfeifer, Jeffrey D. Jensen
We here present high-quality, population-level sequencing data from the X chromosome of the highly-endangered aye-aye, Daubentonia madagascariensis. Using both polymorphism- and divergence-based inference approaches, we quantify fine-scale mutation and recombination rate maps, study the demographic and selective processes additionally shaping variation on the X chromosome, and compare these estimates to those recently inferred from the autosomes in this species. Results suggest that an equal sex ratio is most consistent with observed patterns of variation, and that no sex-specific demographic patterns are needed to fit the empirical site frequency spectrum. Further, reduced rates of recombination were observed relative to the autosomes as would be expected, whereas mutation rates were inferred to be similar. Utilizing the estimated population history together with the mutation and recombination rate maps, we evaluated evidence for both recent and recurrent selective sweeps as well as balancing selection across the X chromosome, finding no significant evidence supporting the action of these episodic processes. Overall, these analyses provide new insights into the evolution of the X chromosome in this species, which represents one of the earliest splits in the primate clade.
{"title":"Interpreting Patterns of X Chromosomal Relative to Autosomal Diversity in Aye-Ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis)","authors":"John W. Terbot II, Vivak Soni, Cyril J. Versoza, Mark Milhaven, Adriana Calahorra-Oliart, Devangana Shah, Susanne P. Pfeifer, Jeffrey D. Jensen","doi":"10.1002/ajp.70091","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ajp.70091","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We here present high-quality, population-level sequencing data from the X chromosome of the highly-endangered aye-aye, <i>Daubentonia madagascariensis</i>. Using both polymorphism- and divergence-based inference approaches, we quantify fine-scale mutation and recombination rate maps, study the demographic and selective processes additionally shaping variation on the X chromosome, and compare these estimates to those recently inferred from the autosomes in this species. Results suggest that an equal sex ratio is most consistent with observed patterns of variation, and that no sex-specific demographic patterns are needed to fit the empirical site frequency spectrum. Further, reduced rates of recombination were observed relative to the autosomes as would be expected, whereas mutation rates were inferred to be similar. Utilizing the estimated population history together with the mutation and recombination rate maps, we evaluated evidence for both recent and recurrent selective sweeps as well as balancing selection across the X chromosome, finding no significant evidence supporting the action of these episodic processes. Overall, these analyses provide new insights into the evolution of the X chromosome in this species, which represents one of the earliest splits in the primate clade.</p>","PeriodicalId":7662,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Primatology","volume":"87 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12682215/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145699706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}