Passion for butterflies emerges from cocoons

Digital bridge

During the anxiety of his doctoral dissertation's blind review, Sun sought a distraction. He began teaching himself deep learning and neural networks, with the aim of developing an AI-powered app to identify butterflies from photos.

He learned coding, servers, and front-end development from scratch. The initial motivation was simple: "Every day, people sent me photos asking for identification. I couldn't answer them all individually, but I knew how crucial it was for a beginner to identify their first butterfly."

"Wenhao's Butterfly Identifier" has slowly gained users. Now, people upload a photo from their phone and can get a possible name in seconds.

This spring, with the publication of Living Butterflies in China, Sun feels a chapter in his butterfly chase has concluded. In the meantime, a far vaster world is opening — moths.

China has over 2,500 recorded butterfly species, but Sun's preliminary moth checklist already exceeds 20,000. Many perceive butterflies as beautiful, while moths are often seen as dull-colored and hairy. But delve deeper, and moths reveal an astonishing diversity of forms. "Sometimes I feel nature reserved more of its creativity for moths," Sun said.

Sun had developed "Wenhao Moth Identifier" earlier. He and Chen are now working on "Xiaoyangfang", a new system that integrates and upgrades the two mini-apps, aiming to combine identification with species distributions, personal observation records, and public participation features. "Wenhao's Butterfly Identifier" alone has nearly 30,000 users and has handled over a million AI identifications. Sun has single-handedly managed its core development, model training, database organization, and daily maintenance.

"For me, butterflies are no longer just a hobby; they've connected so many people and events in my life – friends, travel, writing books, research, developing apps, and even my romantic life," Sun said.

Sun and Chen plan to visit the Gaoligong Mountains in Yunnan in search of the Bhutan Glory swallowtail later this month. The butterfly emerges for only a very short period each year. Adult butterflies live brief lives, some as short as three days.

"Whether I'll actually encounter it, no one knows," Sun said.

"But for now, we're still going to keep looking."

chenliang@chinadaily.com.cn