Biodiv Sci ›› 2026, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (2): 25256.  DOI: 10.17520/biods.2025256  cstr: 32101.14.biods.2025256

• Technology and Methodology • Previous Articles     Next Articles

A wildlife recognition method for skewed distributions based on the Diff-SCC model

Lin Ji1,2,3, Chenxun Deng1,2,3, Lifeng Wang1,2,3(), Degang Wang1,2,3, Jiantao Wang4(), Yongyong Yu4, Junguo Zhang1,2,3,*()   

  1. 1 School of Technology, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing100083, China
    2 State Key Laboratory of Efficient Production of Forest Resources, Beijing100083, China
    3 Research Center for Biodiversity Intelligent Monitoring, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing100083, China
    4 Administration of Ulanba National Nature Reserve, Chifeng, Inner Mongolia 025450, China
  • Received:2025-07-02 Accepted:2026-01-14 Online:2026-02-20 Published:2026-03-23
  • Contact: E-mail: zhangjunguo@bjfu.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China(32371874);Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(CGZH202501)

Abstract:

Aims: With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, deep learning has become a key tool for automating wildlife image recognition and advancing intelligent ecological monitoring. However, real-world wildlife image datasets typically exhibit a skewed distribution, in which a few common species have abundant samples, while most species are underrepresented, thereby limiting the overall recognition performance of the model.

Methods: To address this issue, this study proposed a novel method for wildlife recognition named Diff-SCC, which integrated data generation using a diffusion model and feature reconstruction. Specifically, rich semantic descriptions of low-frequency categories were first generated using a large language model to guide the diffusion model in synthesizing additional samples. A multi-scale negative sample filtering strategy was then introduced to assess image quality from pixel, feature, and semantic levels, enhancing the diversity and balance of low-frequency categories’ features. Furthermore, an SCConv module was incorporated into the backbone network to improve spatial and channel modeling, focusing more effectively on foreground regions while reducing redundant computation.

Results: This paper conducted comparative experiments on a self-built wildlife dataset from Ulanba National Nature Reserve, which comprised 12 wildlife categories, and on the public wildlife NACTI dataset. Results showed that the proposed Diff-SCC model achieves overall recognition accuracies of 78.71% and 80.84% on the two datasets, respectively. Notably, the recognition accuracy of low-frequency classes improved by 9.96% and 9.99% over the baseline model, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method in handling skewed data and recognizing rare species.

Conclusion: The Diff-SCC model proposed in this study demonstrates strong capability in mitigating the challenges of skewed distributions in wildlife image classification. It offers a reliable and practical solution for intelligent wildlife monitoring and contributes to the advancement of biodiversity conservation.

Key words: wildlife, image classification, skewed distributions, diffusion model, feature reconstruction