scholarly journals Seeing near and seeing far; behavioural evidence for dual mechanisms of pattern vision in the honeybee (Apis mellifera)

2012 ◽  
Vol 215 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. G. Dyer ◽  
D. W. Griffiths
2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1565) ◽  
pp. 703-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Kraft ◽  
C. Evangelista ◽  
M. Dacke ◽  
T. Labhart ◽  
M. V. Srinivasan

While it is generally accepted that honeybees ( Apis mellifera ) are capable of using the pattern of polarized light in the sky to navigate to a food source, there is little or no direct behavioural evidence that they actually do so. We have examined whether bees can be trained to find their way through a maze composed of four interconnected tunnels, by using directional information provided by polarized light illumination from the ceilings of the tunnels. The results show that bees can learn this task, thus demonstrating directly, and for the first time, that bees are indeed capable of using the polarized-light information in the sky as a compass to steer their way to a food source.


Author(s):  
Maria Anna Pabst

In addition to the compound eyes, honeybees have three dorsal ocelli on the vertex of the head. Each ocellus has about 800 elongated photoreceptor cells. They are paired and the distal segment of each pair bears densely packed microvilli forming together a platelike fused rhabdom. Beneath a common cuticular lens a single layer of corneagenous cells is present.Ultrastructural studies were made of the retina of praepupae, different pupal stages and adult worker bees by thin sections and freeze-etch preparations. In praepupae the ocellar anlage consists of a conical group of epidermal cells that differentiate to photoreceptor cells, glial cells and corneagenous cells. Some photoreceptor cells are already paired and show disarrayed microvilli with circularly ordered filaments inside. In ocelli of 2-day-old pupae, when a retinogenous and a lentinogenous cell layer can be clearly distinguished, cell membranes of the distal part of two photoreceptor cells begin to interdigitate with each other and so start to form the definitive microvilli. At the beginning the microvilli often occupy the whole width of the developing rhabdom (Fig. 1).


2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-171
Author(s):  
А.В. СПРЫГИН ◽  
◽  
Ю.Ю. БАБИН ◽  
Е.М. ХАНБЕКОВА ◽  
Л.Е. РУБЦОВА ◽  
...  

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