Size isn’t everything when it comes to insect vision. According to a new paper this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, some of the smallest honey bees studied have photoreceptors as sharp as larger honey bee drones.
blue striped bee Amegilla muraensis. Image credit: Callin Switzer.
“Honeybee (Western honey bee) (just one of around 20,000 species in the world) has a special place in visual research,” said first author Dr. Elisa Rigosi from Lund University and her colleagues.
“Bees are one of the most well-studied insects, and much of what scientists know about how bees perceive the world is based on studies of honey bees.”
For the study, Dr Ligosi and co-authors from Lund University and the University of Adelaide used a technique called intracellular recording to measure the electrical responses of individual photoreceptors (light-sensing cells in the insect’s eyes) in four species of bees and each sex.
This species includes the buff-tailed bumblebee (Western bumblebee), two closely related species Anthophorini, and Solitary Wool Carder Bee (Antidium manicatum).
The researchers compared their results to previously published data on honeybees.
All groups tested had sharper visual acuity than female bee foragers.
The most impressive discovery concerned the blue-striped bee (Amegilla muraensis), a small solitary species native to Australia.
Despite its modest eye size, it rivaled the ability to detect small, dark objects of honeybee drones (bees specially adapted to tracking queens through the air at high speeds).
Scientists have discovered that different species acquire powerful vision through different anatomical strategies.
Male brood bees, which actively patrol and defend territories, invest heavily in dense and focused visual sampling, at the expense of some ability to detect low-contrast objects.
In contrast, Honeybee drones rely on unusually large lenses and light-focusing structures to maximize both clarity and sensitivity at the same time.
Blue-band bees achieve high performance more efficiently, apparently due to low background noise in visual cells rather than heavy structural investment.
“We were particularly surprised that this tiny blue-band bee was able to detect objects in the same way as male honeybees, despite being much smaller,” Dr. Ligosi said.
Looking at the diameter, lovedom Under electron microscopy, the authors correlated these physiological differences with specific anatomical trade-offs. Narrowly striated bees tend to have sharper vision but less sensitivity, whereas wider striated bees capture more light at the expense of resolution.
“There is no one way to improve the vision of bees,” said Professor David O’Carroll of Lund University.
“Different species have arrived at different combinations of traits that produce high visual performance.”
“Bee vision is much more diverse than previously thought,” Dr. Ligosi says.
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Elisa Ligosi others. 2026. Photoreceptor recordings revealed a marked acuity of small solitary bees compared to larger species. PNAS 123 (36): e2534625123;doi: 10.1073/pnas.2534625123
Source: www.sci.news
