AutoMoth

Why’d we build it?

With insect populations shifting and declining in the face of climate change, monitoring insects in nature to understand and protect them has become a critical task in conservation. Most approaches to monitoring insects at large scales are expensive and labor intensive. We wanted to create a cheap automated system to obtain relative abundance data for insects, using the potential of citizen science to scale up moth monitoring across the United States. AutoMoth makes it simple for you to start monitoring!

What does it do?

AutoMoth is a cheap and easy approach for automated monitoring of moths and night flying insects. With the BioLens Android app and some very simple materials, AutoMoth does long nights of monitoring for you. AutoMoth will automatically take pictures of visiting insects to be uploaded within the app to a Google Drive folder or transferred to your computer using the Android File Transfer app. In the app you can also upload insects the system has spotted to iNaturalist to help get them identified by experts.

How to make and deploy?

A full insect monitoring system using AutoMoth can be made without any tools using many materials you might already have around the house. Depending on what you already have, a full automated monitoring system can be made for between $35 to $130.

To use, just place the system in your backyard or natural area, plug it into power (or attach an additional solar battery system), specify times to turn on and how many images you want to capture, then leave it be. When you return days or weeks later, hundreds or thousands of insect images will be saved to the phone at the ready for upload and use.

Ready to get started?

Download the BioLens Android app
View the guide on making your own monitoring system