Barro Colorado Island

During my first semester of grad school, I had the opportunity to participate in a field expedition in Panama, deploying camera traps for long-term monitoring of moth populations on Barro Colorado Island. The biodiversity there was incredible, and I was shocked to learn that over 25% of the species we photographed in just one week were completely new to science.

Until this experience, I had not realized the vast diversity of insects, nor how little we actually know about “the little things that run the world.” This experience really showed me how much we need automated monitoring systems, and how important machine learning can be for making them possible.

Here are some photos of “the little things that run the world.”