About
The Model
NHSPID, New Hampshire Spider Identifier, is a machine learning tool that identifies spiders in NH.
The Classifier
- Trained on 123,099 images across 161 species of NH spiders
- Uses a DINOv2 Vision Transformer (ViT-L/14, 518px) architecture (~300M parameters)
- Achieves 91.7% accuracy on test data
- Hosted via Hugging Face Inference Endpoints (Intel Sapphire Rapids, 4 vCPUs, 8 GB)
- Currently has one head with 161 classes
- Fine-tuned with differential learning rates (0.0001 for backbone layers, 0.001 for classifier)
The Dataset
The model was trained on observations made available on iNaturalist. The full training dataset is publicly available on Hugging Face.
Inclusion Criteria
- At least one research-grade observation in New Hampshire
- A minimum of 30 observations and 75 photos per species
- Permissively licensed photos only (CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-NC-SA)
Versions
| Version | Date | Model | Species |
|---|---|---|---|
| v1 | 7/15/25 | ViT-L/16 (224) | 36 |
| v2 | 5/28/26 | DINOv2 ViT-L/14 (518) | 161 |
Future Directions
Include spiders from regions that border NH
Add species with low image counts
Continue to improve the model's accuracy
Display default images for both sexes of a species
- Include spiders from bordering regions (e.g., Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, and southern regions of Canada that border NH)
- Add species with low image counts
- Continue to improve the model's accuracy
- Display default images for both sexes of a species
Contact
Questions, comments, or feedback about the New Hampshire Spider Identifier? Feel free to reach out by email.