IWET – Insect Weight Estimation Tool

We present a novel tool called IWET (Insect Weight Estimation Tool) for estimating morphometrics of arthropod samples using image analysis. IWET is a Java application built around ImageJ libraries and is designed to estimate length, width, area and body mass of individual arthropods from images of specimens sorted into pre-defined taxonomic groups. Using allometric relationships from Sohlströhm et al. (2018), we developed specific regression models to calculate both the individual body mass and the total biomass of arthropod taxonomic groups. IWET provides several advantages: it is non-destructive, cost-effective, and capable of processing large numbers of samples, making it particularly well-suited for biodiversity monitoring projects investigating changes in abundance and biomass, as well as for automating measurements such as specimen length, width and area.