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A comparison of compound eye sizes between bumblebees of different habitats using micro-CT

Woin, Alexander (2018) BIOK01 20172
Degree Projects in Biology
Popular Abstract
The Bumbling Bumblebee, they see more than you think!

Bumblebees are probably one of the most universally loved insects in the animal kingdom. They don’t irritate you or sting you unlike their relatives, instead they do their own thing while performing their daily tasks of collecting pollen and nectar for the colony. We wanted to learn more about how the bumblebee view the world and how the environment shape the physiological characteristics of the bumblebee.

To achieve this we used a relatively new form of digital analysis called micro computed tomography (micro-CT in short). If you have ever broken any of your legs broken and had your bones examined with x-rays it’s basically the same thing. The way this works is that you scan a... (More)
The Bumbling Bumblebee, they see more than you think!

Bumblebees are probably one of the most universally loved insects in the animal kingdom. They don’t irritate you or sting you unlike their relatives, instead they do their own thing while performing their daily tasks of collecting pollen and nectar for the colony. We wanted to learn more about how the bumblebee view the world and how the environment shape the physiological characteristics of the bumblebee.

To achieve this we used a relatively new form of digital analysis called micro computed tomography (micro-CT in short). If you have ever broken any of your legs broken and had your bones examined with x-rays it’s basically the same thing. The way this works is that you scan a sample using high energy x-rays and some light gets absorbed or reflected by matter while some waves pass through intact. These waves are then picked up on the other side and the shadow generated by the sample can be recorded and analyzed. This however only generates a two-dimensional picture. To solve this the sample is rotated 180 degrees while being scanned multiple times, this generates a stack of images, or slices, of the entire sample which can be further examined in the computer.

The stack of images can be used to generate a complete 3D model of the scanned sample of both internal and external morphological features. This is a very powerful tool not only because you can make very accurate measurements but it is also possible to label and separate individual structures and organs allowing the researcher to examine complex internal structures as is without having to destroy the tissue.
We used this technique to measure both the distance between the compound eyes and the surface area of the right eye. This together with information collected during sampling made it possible for us to perform several tests.

We found that bumblebees that lived in warmer climates generally had larger eyes compared to those living in colder and more barren habitats. The interesting thing about this is that poor lighting conditions usually lead to animals developing larger eyes to be able to let more light in to compensate. But warmer more temperate climates are usually accociated with more light, so what’s going on here? The theory is that hotter climates also have more and denser forests and trees with a lot of foliage form thick canopy that severely reduces the light that reaches all the animals living underneath. This together with the fact that bumblebees tend to live in these forested regions leads us to believe that denser canopy leads to bumblebees developing larger eyes.

Examensarbete för kandidatexamen i Biologi 15 hp 2017
Biologiska institutionen, Lunds Universitet

Handledare: Emily Baird, Pierre Tichit
Vision Group (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Woin, Alexander
supervisor
organization
course
BIOK01 20172
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
language
English
id
8937934
date added to LUP
2018-03-22 15:40:57
date last changed
2018-03-22 15:40:57
@misc{8937934,
  author       = {{Woin, Alexander}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{A comparison of compound eye sizes between bumblebees of different habitats using micro-CT}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}