New AI system can find microscopic marine organisms

Washington: An artificial intelligence ( AI) programme that can automatically provide species- level identification of microscopic marine organisms has been developed by researchers, including one from India. The next step is to incorporate the AI into a robotic system that will help advance our understanding of the world's oceans, both now and in our prehistoric past, said researchers, including Ritayan Mitra, a former postdoctoral researcher at North Carolina State University in the US, who is now at IIT Bombay. Specifically, the AI programme has proven capable of identifying six species of foraminifera, or forams — organisms that have been prevalent in Earth’s oceans for over 100 million years, according to the study published in the journal Marine Micropaleontology. Forams are protists, neither plant nor animal. When they die, they leave behind their tiny shells, most less than a millimetre wide. These shells give scientists insights into the characteristics of the oceans as they existed when the forams were alive. For example, different types of foram species thrive in different kinds of ocean environments, and chemical measurements can tell scientists about everything from the ocean's chemistry to its temperature when the shell was being formed. However, evaluating those foram shells is both tedious and time consuming. “At this point, the AI identifies the forams about 80 per cent of the time, which is better than most trained humans,” said Lobaton, a professor at North Carolina State University.