This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The honey bee has held a special place in vision research. It is one of the best-studied insects, and much of what scientists know about how bees perceive the world is based on studies of honey bees.
The honey bee is only one of the world's roughly 20,000 bee species. A new study by researchers at Lund University and the University of Adelaide reveals a more nuanced picture after scientists turned their attention to other species. The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers examined the visual abilities of bumblebees and three species of solitary bees, insects that live alone rather than in large colonies headed by a queen, as honey bees do. By recording electrical signals from individual light-sensitive cells in the bees' eyes, the researchers were able to estimate how small an object the insects can detect and how fine their visual resolution is. All four species showed higher visual resolution in the examined photoreceptor cells than worker honey bees.
One species stood out in particular: the small Australian blue-banded bee, Amegilla murrayensis, which is easily distinguished from honey bees by the blue or bluish-gray bands across its abdomen. "We were especially surprised that the small blue-banded bee could detect objects just as well as honey bee drones, despite being much smaller," says Elisa Rigosi, a biology researcher at Lund University. Honey bee drones are known for their exceptional eyesight.
One of their key tasks is locating and pursuing queens during mating flights, which places high demands on their ability to detect moving objects. The fact that a much smaller solitary bee can match this level of visual performance provides important insights into the relationship between eye size and vision. Large eyes are not the only route to sharp sight.
The researchers also investigated how visual performance is linked to the structure of the eye. They analyzed lens size, the organization of light-sensitive cells and the way compound eyes map visual space. The findings suggest that bees have evolved several different solutions for achieving high-quality vision.
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