Cited by 1,451Advanced Neural Network ApplicationsDomain Adaptation and Few-Shot LearningSmart Agriculture and AI

The iNaturalist Species Classification and Detection Dataset

Van Horn, Grant, Mac Aodha, Oisin, Song, Yang, Cui, Yin, Sun, Chen, Shepard, Alex, Adam, Hartwig, Perona, Pietro +1 more·2018·2018 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Abstract

Existing image classification datasets used in computer vision tend to have a uniform distribution of images across object categories. In contrast, the natural world is heavily imbalanced, as some species are more abundant and easier to photograph than others. To encourage further progress in challenging real world conditions we present the iNaturalist species classification and detection dataset, consisting of 859,000 images from over 5,000 different species of plants and animals. It features visually similar species, captured in a wide variety of situations, from all over the world. Images were collected with different camera types, have varying image quality, feature a large class imbalance, and have been verified by multiple citizen scientists. We discuss the collection of the dataset and present extensive baseline experiments using state-of-the-art computer vision classification and detection models. Results show that current non-ensemble based methods achieve only 67% top one classification accuracy, illustrating the difficulty of the dataset. Specifically, we observe poor results for classes with small numbers of training examples suggesting more attention is needed in low-shot learning.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1109/cvpr.2018.00914

Cites

48 of 48 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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  • Biases are not limited to geographical provenance: the type of sensors used, the species they depict, and the imbalance in the number of individuals observed per species must also be considered when training or using models to avoid potentially catastrophic drop-offs in accuracy.

    “Biases are not limited to the geographical provenance of images: the type of sensors used (RGB vs. infrared or thermal), the species they depict, and the imbalance in the number of individuals observed per species55,132 must also be considered when training or using models to avoid potentially catastrophic drop-offs in accuracy”

    From Perspectives in machine learning for wildlife conservation (2022) · cites this paper as [132]

  • Many open imagery repositories such as Artportalen.se, Naturgucker.de, and Waarneming.nl collect images from specific regions, and most contributions on iNaturalist come from the Northern hemisphere.

    “For example, many open imagery repositories such as Artportalen.se, Naturgucker.de, and Waarneming.nl collect images from specific regions, and most contributions on iNaturalist132 (see Table 2) come from the Northern hemisphere.”

    From Perspectives in machine learning for wildlife conservation (2022) · cites this paper as [132]

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Authors
Van Horn, G., Mac Aodha, O., Song, Y., Cui, Y., Sun, C., Shepard, A., Adam, H., Perona, P., & Belongie, S.
Affiliations
  • Google (United States) (US)
  • Cornell Tech (US)
  • California Institute of Technology (US)
Venue
2018 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Publisher
IEEE
Published
2018-06
Pages
8769-8778
ISSN
1063-6919 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2797977484
Cited by
1,451
References
49
Citations by year
2026: 150 · 2025: 261 · 2024: 261 · 2023: 264 · 2022: 164 · 2021: 190 · 2020: 100 · 2019: 55 · 2018: 6
FWCI
26.45
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition/Proceedings - IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition/Proceedings (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Advanced Neural Network Applications
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Domain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Smart Agriculture and AI
Keywords
species classification, species detection, iNaturalist, class imbalance, citizen science, plant images, animal imagery, few-shot learning, image classification, object detection

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