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The world ’s loneliest tree diagram may presently find a mate , thanks to unreal intelligence ( AI ) .
Only a single , male specimen of theWood ’s cycad(Encephalartos woodii ) has ever been discovered in the wild . In 1895 , botanist John Medley Wood found the lonesome works in what is now the Ngoye Forest Reserve in KwaZulu - Natal , South Africa .
By using drones to search the native forest of the lonely cycad, scientists hope to find a potential mate.
cycad , a primitive type of germ plant , first emerge around 300 million years ago , before dinosaur roamed Earth . In cycads , manlike and female reproductive structures — called cones — are produced by separate plant .
However , E. woodiialso reproduces via offshoot , think of that the parent flora sends out shoots that change by reversal into other grownup plants . In the 20th century , botanists move out some of the offshoots and transplant some of the original trunks from the lonely male in South Africa . These have founder rise to about 500 separate plant that live in botanical garden around the world .
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Drone aerial mapping is being used to search for a female partner for one of the rarest plants in the world.
However , sexual reproduction is necessary for the long term viability of the species . To help the manly offshoots find mates , scientist have launched a series of bourdon flights over the cycad ’s remote and inaccessible native forests .
The scientists then use AI algorithms to sieve through the optical imagination pull in by the drone . " Our project ’s approach to using AI focuses on the visual recognition of cycads , which resemble palm tree when viewed from above , " saidLaura Cinti , conscientious objector - founding father of C - LAB , an art and skill collective , and a research fellow at the University of Southampton in England . " ab initio , we adopted detection models that are routinely used in the palm fossil oil manufacture for counting thenar trees , but to optimize it for our specific viewpoint and unequalled contour of cycads , we train our own image identification algorithms , " Cinti told Live Science .
view in2022and2024captured yard of images from 195 acre ( 79 hectares ) of the 10,000 - acre ( 4,000 hectare ) Ngoye Forest . The drone cameras captured epitome in five wavelengths in the hopes of identify the cycads ' unparalleled spectral signature tune , making it easier to distinguish them from the palisade tree . " We analyzed ecological features to strategically target orbit where cycad are most likely to be find , starting at the forest edges — whereE. woodiiwas discovered , " Cinti said . old surveysconducted by other scientist have been fruitless .
The researchers ran the thousands of images throughYOLOv8 , a data processor imagination model used in image - recognition tasks , Cinti enounce . " A separate generative AI system created synthetic maps with cycad in various environs to improve the model ’s power to realise cycads in divers contexts , " she note . They trained the mannequin using a mountain range of picture of various cycad coinage and place them in digitally generated canopy to teach the program what their target might look like from above .
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Hilly terrain and cloud cover made analyzing the images extra knavish . The team plans to bear on refining the mannequin .
Promising candidate can then be inspected by near passes of the drone . " We can guide some of these drones using first - individual view , which enable us to do fine navigation and obtain detailed close - ups , " Cinti aver . " However , as a terminal step , ground truth verification is always necessary to affirm the findings . "
If a female is located , it would likely be removed from the natural state . Ideally , it would produce cones . " In controlled environments , pollenation can be managed either naturally or unnaturally . Once seed are get , they would be carefully cultivate to ascertain respectable growth , " she said . The ultimate goal is to produce rich , healthy seedlings that could then be reintroduced into their native habitat .
