I know about some guys who developed a software called ant counter, for leafcuttining ants, may be you could contact them, I have this abstract from many years ago. You could google it.
AntCounter: UN SOFTWARE PARA CONTAR HORMIGAS
CORTADORAS DE HOJAS (HYMENOPTERA: FORMICIDAE:
Atta Y Acromyrmex)
S. Bustamante, A. Amarillo-Su´arez
Hope it helps!
I think there are counters for honey bees to monitor entering/leaving hive. You could tag the insects and a program like Observer could make counts. I have encountered a rumor about a system that will identify insects (and kill them) using a laser system. I have seen the device work, but not been able to get my hands on one. The system was designed for mosquito control. It is called a Photonic fence and can be seen on the intellectualventures.com web page. While it is designed to kill specific insects, all you need to is record the number of times the kill laser fires. If you don't want to kill then turn off that laser and count the number of times it would have fired. There are also radar based system for counting moths above agricultural fields. I would guess that you could develop an acoustic counter if the insects make noise. If the insect is restricted to crawling, you might be able to use a low voltage system and when the insect walks across a plate it generates an electronic signal. You could also use a laser diode and a photocell and every time the insect blocks the laser it trips a counter. There are also camera systems that will trigger a camera to take a picture when an animal gets within range. I hope this helps.
Mr Timothy, the device is main for counting purpose. Instead of counting manually through eyes observation, I want to make it automated by scanning the oil palm frond on the ground. Move it slowly and vertically along the fronds, and we get the reading on how many bagworms per frond, live bagworms per frond. Maybe radar system can work, but the fronds are overlapped and it can reduce the accuracy of counting pests.
I work with mosquitoes and use this http://www.malariajournal.com/content/11/1/302 It is an automated sorter for larvae.
Ah, that is better. The radar system works for flying insects, as might the photonic fence. I have used a camera and Image Pro Plus to analyze for pesticide deposits on a leaf surface. The biggest problem is contrast. However, bag worms are large (relative to pesticide deposits) and are usually darker than the leaf surface. However, the leaf would probably have to be back lit to maximize contrast.
If the bagworms do not leave the plant when the larvae are mature it may be difficult to determine if the bagworm is still alive.
My graduate student developed AntCounter which is an open access software that can be used to count LCA under field or laboratory conditions. It is based on recorded videos of LCA passing through a fixed point, and the LCA can be recorded with any digital camera and at a low resolution. The software works by detecting the movement of the objects in the video, and the software and the installation guide can be found at:
https://sites.google.com/site/antcounter/.
AntCounter is based on "HP computer vision” technology and is written in Python 2.7 with the OpenCV 2.4.10 library. It runs on a Windows environment or any other operating system that supports Python 2.7 (http://www.python.org/) and OpenCV 2.4.10 (http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/).
the manuscript describing details of the software will be published soon at Insect Behavior and sociiobiology journal. Hope you use it and let us know how it worked.
Hi Angela,
Actually, I want to develop a device which can count the larvae crawling on the palmleaflet in the field. Just scan the leaf, and the device will display number of larvae on the leaflet spontaneously.
TQ
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