Machine learning algorithms accurately identify free-living marine nematode species

BACKGROUND: Identifying species, particularly small metazoans, remains a daunting challenge and the phylum Nematoda is no exception. Typically, nematode species are differentiated based on morphometry and the presence or absence of certain characters. However, recent advances in artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning (ML) algorithms, offer promising solutions for automating species identification, mostly in taxonomically complex groups. By training ML models with extensive datasets of accurately identified specimens, the models can learn to recognize patterns in nematodes’ morphological and morphometric features. This enables them to make precise identifications of newly encountered individuals. Implementing ML algorithms can improve the speed and accuracy of species identification and allow researchers to efficiently process vast amounts of data. Furthermore, it empowers non-taxonomists to make reliable identifications. The objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of ML algorithms in identifying species of free-living marine nematodes, focusing on two well-known genera: Acantholaimus Allgén, 1933 and Sabatieria Rouville, 1903. METHODS: A total of 40 species of Acantholaimus and 60 species of Sabatieria were considered. The measurements and identifications were obtained from the original publications of species for both genera, this compilation included information regarding the presence or absence of specific characters, as well as morphometric data. To assess the performance of the species identification four ML algorithms were employed: Random Forest (RF), Stochastic Gradient Boosting (SGBoost), Support Vector Machine (SVM) with both linear and radial kernels, and K-nearest neighbor (KNN) algorithms. RESULTS: For both genera, the random forest (RF) algorithm demonstrated the highest accuracy in correctly classifying specimens into their respective species, achieving an accuracy rate of 93% for Acantholaimus and 100% for Sabatieria, only a single individual from Acantholaimus of the test data was misclassified. CONCLUSION: These results highlight the overall effectiveness of ML algorithms in species identification. Moreover, it demonstrates that the identification of marine nematodes can be automated, optimizing biodiversity and ecological studies, as well as turning species identification more accessible, efficient, and scalable. Ultimately it will contribute to our understanding and conservation of biodiversity.