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   myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 18:51:46 JST myrmepropagandist

   What group is more diverse?

   Plankton or Bugs?

   Are plankton just... sea bugs?

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 18:51:41 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • kechpaja

     @futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly This was true in the past but seems silly today. Capture, high res photogrammetry, release should be trivial.

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     myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 18:51:42 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • kechpaja

     @kechpaja @llewelly

     I was saddened by the insect deaths that are used to catalog species, however if you are proposing trying to just photograph them all ... well. We'd probably only know about half of the insects we do now.

     I assume most people who study insects like them and wouldn't kill a few 100 without it making good progress. And these death traps are nothing in comparison to the territory and environmental destruction that kills in the tens of millions.

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     kechpaja (kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 18:51:43 JST kechpaja

     in reply to

     • llewelly

     @llewelly @futurebird Why do we still have to kill creatures just to know that they exist?

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     llewelly (llewelly@sauropods.win)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 18:51:45 JST llewelly

     in reply to

     @futurebird
     some plankton are tiny arthropods. But there are many other kinds of plankton not closely related to arthropods (or to each other), diatoms, radiolarians, algae, cyanobacteria, so many more I don't know anything about.

     I don't know if anyone has done any equivalent to the "deathfog a dozen different species of trees, see how many new insects fall out, use that to estimate total insect diversity" experiments for plankton.

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 18:55:17 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • kechpaja

     @futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly Seems like you could do a sort of destructive capture short of blasting the zone with pesticides or whatever they do.

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     myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 18:55:18 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • Rich Felker
     • kechpaja

     @dalias @kechpaja @llewelly

     There are bugs you'll never find if you just keep exposing different zone of the leaf litter and trees to light.

     These arthropods are *only* found when you do a destructive survey. IDK how to get around that.

     That said, I do not have the expertise to say if destructive surveys are done too often, but I do think doing them on occasion can't be avoided.

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 18:57:57 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • kechpaja

     @futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly That's why I said photogrammetry. It's taking thousands of photographs from all angles and deriving a 3D model.

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     myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 18:57:58 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • Rich Felker
     • kechpaja

     @dalias @kechpaja @llewelly

     Also, and I didn't believe this until I got serious about learning to identify ants, even the very best photographs do not have the detail of a pinned specimen. This is because we are talking about a very complex three-dimensional form. You have a few excellent macro photos but not one of them lets you see the mandibles from behind, or the leg at the angle required.

     I now "get" why a holotype has to be a dead bug. Because you often need to go back and look again.

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 19:08:32 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • kechpaja

     @futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly I'd do it with an array of high speed camera sensors (cheap nowadays) on a rapidly spinning gimbal setup where the whole capture would be done in a few microseconds.

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     myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 19:08:33 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • Rich Felker
     • kechpaja

     @dalias @kechpaja @llewelly

     *grumbling*

     we willl see I suppose

     But don't you need the bug to be dead to make that kind of model in the first place?

     Trying to get insects to hold still so they can be documented goes way back.... including this incident in 1665 where Hooke got an ant drunk.

     https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/111354626144207007

     I hope no one ever dips me in brandy so they can draw me under over-bright harsh lights...

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     mmby (mmby@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 19:11:13 JST mmby

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • Rich Felker
     • kechpaja

     @dalias @futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly wouldn't we have to immobilize the animal though?

     photogrammetry at a scale where you get source pictures comparable to microscopy needs focus stacking - meaning you have to mechanically move your optical setup or parts of it to get a single picture with everything in focus

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 19:11:13 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • kechpaja
     • mmby

     @mmby @futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly There are cheap camera sensors on ali that make a room that's dark to the eye look like broad daylight with < 1/1000 s exposure. Set them up with pinhole lenses & focus is irrelevant.

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 19:15:17 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • kechpaja
     • mmby

     @mmby @futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly Related: if I ever put together a DIY phone, this is what I'm using for the camera.

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 19:24:32 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • kechpaja

     @llewelly @futurebird @kechpaja Yeah the key is high speed.

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     llewelly (llewelly@sauropods.win)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 19:24:33 JST llewelly

     in reply to

     • Rich Felker
     • kechpaja

     @dalias @futurebird @kechpaja
     I'd like to know how practical it would be to do thousand-angle photogrammetry with *every* insect in a huge tree that has tens of thousands of insects in it, and then go on to do it for dozens trees, on the budget of a taxonomist, rather than a techno fantasy budget. (I've read microscopic photogrammetry is now being used a lot in mite taxonomy, but they seem not to have the kinds of rigs that can do it fast enough to avoid having to immobilize the specimens.)

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 19:40:10 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     @futurebird @llewelly @kechpaja I think you'd want a box with clear floor halfway down to get the views from below.

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     myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 19:40:11 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • Rich Felker
     • kechpaja

     @dalias @llewelly @kechpaja

     Could one design a box that could be clamped over a small creature and it would do the lighting and photos from all angles all in one go?

     Or a box one could drop an insect into that would do such a multi-angle, perfectly lighted scan?

     When I'm doing wild ant photography I tend to set up some bait and light it well, then hope the ants move into focus.

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     Different Than (guyjantic@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 20:30:29 JST Different Than

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • Rich Felker
     • kechpaja

     @dalias @futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly Conceptually, this is an awesome idea and I can see it clearly in my mind, having spent a while investigating (and failing at) photogrammetry for non-moving objects.

     Nobody wants to hear that AI can do things, but AI algorithms might be exactly what's needed to stitch/extrapolate 3D models from thousands of photos of a moving bug. I would be really interested to see the results, in any case. I think the "moving" part creates some big challenges, even with a bunch of high-speed photos being taken (e.g., with high-speed video equipment).

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 20:30:29 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • llewelly
     • kechpaja
     • Different Than

     @guyjantic @futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly Photogrammetry is already related to what the scammy buzzword crowd calls "AI". It's based on statistical models for extrapolating 3D models from 2D images. Real point-cloud-sampling 3D scanning is a better process that's been largely abandoned for photogrammetry, but for the application here where you can't keep the subject still for real 3D scanning, you actually want photogrammetry I think.