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Examining the geometry of bumblebee ocelli

Hegardt, Hanna (2018) BIOK01 20181
Degree Projects in Biology
Popular Abstract
The simple bumblebee ocelli

With 90 percent of the Swedish population wanting to take care of bees and bumblebees according to Naturvårdsverket, bumblebees might be the most loved pollinators with their cute appearance and friendly temper.

What is special about bumblebees is their ability to be out pollinating in cold temperatures, making them essential to plants needing early pollination. But unfortunately, there is a problem, the bumblebee populations are decreasing in size. This poses a big problem for the ecosystems and for commercial crops that need early pollination such as apples. To help the bumblebees in this plight, it is important to know every aspect of bumblebee life, and their vision is a crucial part of this. In this... (More)
The simple bumblebee ocelli

With 90 percent of the Swedish population wanting to take care of bees and bumblebees according to Naturvårdsverket, bumblebees might be the most loved pollinators with their cute appearance and friendly temper.

What is special about bumblebees is their ability to be out pollinating in cold temperatures, making them essential to plants needing early pollination. But unfortunately, there is a problem, the bumblebee populations are decreasing in size. This poses a big problem for the ecosystems and for commercial crops that need early pollination such as apples. To help the bumblebees in this plight, it is important to know every aspect of bumblebee life, and their vision is a crucial part of this. In this text, their ocelli (small simple eyes on top of the bumblebees heads) have been investigated to find out more about their vision.

This study used ocelli from 22 different bumblebees. The area of the ocelli was measured and the distance between the left- and right ocelli (LR), the right- and median ocelli (RM) and the distance between the median ocelli and the right ocelli vertically (h) were calculated. These distances are illustrated in a picture above.
The ocelli area had a correlation with the body size, but it was not strong enough to suggest that this was the only factor to affect the area. So other factors had to be considered such as species and if the individual was female, male or a queen.

Not too surprisingly the biggest absolute ocelli area was found in Sweden’s biggest bumblebee species, Bombus hyperboreus). The smallest absolute area was found in a small species of bumblebee called Bombus monticola. However, apart from this there where not really any clear conclusions, regarding ocelli area or the formation of the ocelli.
In short no real explanation for the values obtained in the study could be found. More studies are needed using more samples of bumblebees to be able to find out how these cute insects see the world.

Bachelor’s thesis in biology 15 hp 2018
Department of biology, Lund University
Mentors: Pierre Tichit & Emily Baird
Lund university vision group (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Hegardt, Hanna
supervisor
organization
course
BIOK01 20181
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
language
English
id
8962308
date added to LUP
2018-10-24 16:09:37
date last changed
2018-10-24 16:09:37
@misc{8962308,
  author       = {{Hegardt, Hanna}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Examining the geometry of bumblebee ocelli}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}