A scutum-focused deep learning pipeline for species-level identification of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus from citizen-science images (opens in new tab)

Background. Mosquito-borne diseases transmitted by Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, including dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever, depend critically on rapid and accurate vector identification. Although deep learning has achieved high accuracy on curated laboratory images, performance degrades substantially when applied to community-submitted photographs that vary widely in quality, framing, and background. We sought to develop a robust pipeline for distinguishing these two morphol...