Acoustic Detection of Forest Wood-Boring Insects Under Co-Infestations

Acoustic detection technology has emerged as a promising, non-destructive and continuous monitoring method for pest early detection at the single tree level. However, field application still encounters problems, especially under complex infestation scenarios, i.e., co-infestations by multiple pest species. This study aims to develop a novel acoustic-based recognition model for detecting forest wood-boring pests, specially designed to enhance monitoring accuracy under complex infestation scenarios. We collected feeding vibration signals from four wood-boring pests: Semanotus bifasciatus, Phloeosinus aubei, Agrilus planipennis, and Streltzoviella insularis. Three infestation scenarios were designed: single-species, co-infestation without mixed signals, and co-infestation with mixed signals. Three machine learning (ML) models (Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Artificial Neural Network) based on seven acoustic feature variables, and three deep learning (DL) models (AlexNet, ResNet, and VGG) using spectrograms were employed to classify the signals. Results showed that ML models achieved perfect accuracy (OA: 100%, Kappa: 1) in single-species scenarios but declined significantly under co-infestation scenarios with mixed signals. In contrast, DL models, particularly ResNet, maintained high accuracy (OA: 85.0–88.75%) and effectively discriminated mixed signals. In conclusion, this study demonstrates the superiority of spectrogram-based DL models for acoustic detection under complex infestation scenarios and provides a foundation for developing a general, real-time detection model for integrated pest management in forest ecosystems.