{"title":"Convolutional neural networks and vision transformers for Plankton Classification","authors":"Loris Nanni , Alessandra Lumini , Leonardo Barcellona , Stefano Ghidoni","doi":"10.1016/j.ecoinf.2025.103272","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, we present a study on plankton classification for automated underwater ecosystems monitoring. The study considers the creation of ensembles combining different Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models and transformer architectures to understand whether different optimization algorithms can result in more robust and efficient classification across various plankton datasets. Tests involved different variants of the Adam optimizer and multiple learning rate variation strategies applied to several CNN architectures, building an ensemble of classifiers. Such ensembles were tested together with transformer-based models in a detailed comparative analysis considering feature extraction efficiency, computational cost, and robustness to species imbalances. The study highlights the performance of individual nets and ensembles on multiple plankton datasets, and discusses the potential for generalizing this approach to broader aquatic ecosystems. Experiments demonstrate that combining diverse neural network models in a heterogeneous ensemble significantly improves performance with respect to other state-of-the-art approaches across all the problems considered. Final results show that the ensemble-based approach achieves a remarkable accuracy improvement over individual CNN models and over standalone Vision Transformers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51024,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Informatics","volume":"90 ","pages":"Article 103272"},"PeriodicalIF":5.8000,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ecological Informatics","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S157495412500281X","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In this paper, we present a study on plankton classification for automated underwater ecosystems monitoring. The study considers the creation of ensembles combining different Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models and transformer architectures to understand whether different optimization algorithms can result in more robust and efficient classification across various plankton datasets. Tests involved different variants of the Adam optimizer and multiple learning rate variation strategies applied to several CNN architectures, building an ensemble of classifiers. Such ensembles were tested together with transformer-based models in a detailed comparative analysis considering feature extraction efficiency, computational cost, and robustness to species imbalances. The study highlights the performance of individual nets and ensembles on multiple plankton datasets, and discusses the potential for generalizing this approach to broader aquatic ecosystems. Experiments demonstrate that combining diverse neural network models in a heterogeneous ensemble significantly improves performance with respect to other state-of-the-art approaches across all the problems considered. Final results show that the ensemble-based approach achieves a remarkable accuracy improvement over individual CNN models and over standalone Vision Transformers.
期刊介绍:
The journal Ecological Informatics is devoted to the publication of high quality, peer-reviewed articles on all aspects of computational ecology, data science and biogeography. The scope of the journal takes into account the data-intensive nature of ecology, the growing capacity of information technology to access, harness and leverage complex data as well as the critical need for informing sustainable management in view of global environmental and climate change.
The nature of the journal is interdisciplinary at the crossover between ecology and informatics. It focuses on novel concepts and techniques for image- and genome-based monitoring and interpretation, sensor- and multimedia-based data acquisition, internet-based data archiving and sharing, data assimilation, modelling and prediction of ecological data.