The “Earth News” section of the Telegraph has a nice series of pictures of insect eyes: “Bug-eyed: Macrophotographs of insects by Ireneusz Irass Walędzik”. They’re wonderful. The series has 18 pictures, and I’ll show seven. Not all are identified in the Torygraph, so readers with entomological expertise can add their IDs. All photographs are credited to Ireneusz Waledzik/Caters News:
h/t: P.
Beautiful pictures, amazingly sharp. I recognize the second face, a blue damselfly.
Is there any difference in use between the different colours of the individual cells? Is Ommatidia the right word?
Excuse the poor phrasing, I’m only a Physics student.
Stephen Gould was fond of underscoring the fact that primates are visual animals; and perforce our (his) Emphasis on the primacy of iconography. Does his statement have to be debugged (in part) by being bugged.
Gorgeous pics. I wonder how accurate the colors are. Are the patterns on some of the eyes due to polarization?
Spectacular images. Thanks
Speculating [geddit?] on the colours in *compound eyes*…
I read somewhere that the colours change post mortem & that’s the reason for the colour patterns over the surface of the *compound eye” in at least some cases
I also read that each *facet* is surrounded by colour pigment screens & there’s more than one colour of pigment. Could this have an effect?
I also considered *the oil pattern effect* that gives butterfly wings their colours
Old entomologist here. Long time since I identified to species, but lets see..
2nd is a damselfly, possibly the ‘Common blue”. Enallagma cyathigerum or Enallagma annexum, depending on whether it is American or European. I cheated here and looked up the species names.
4th looks like the honeybee, Apis mellifera.
6th and 7th are probably horseflies, but I could not rule out deerflies. Possibly of different species. I am thinking the 7th is a male b/c it lacks the biting mouth parts and has very large compound eyes.
Well, the 4th might not be the honeybee. That seemed off to me, so I checked pix on the internet. Similar, but it does not match enough to convince me that I was right.
Admittedly I am only a botanist but I think you got them all right – that sure looks like a honeybee.
That is kind, but I did compare it to several online. I am reasonably sure it is a bee, but I see that honeybees have a lot of hairs coming out of their compound eyes. Also, although the amount of hair on the faces were variable (which was interesting…) none have the amount of hair this one has. There are other little differences too.
No idea what any of them are, but number 7 is wearing the coolest pair of ‘Aviators’ ever!
Freakiest part about these headshots are the ocelli on the top of the heads. That is the stuff of nightmares.
Another example of how the known is way more fascinating than the unknown.
I actually meant more fascinating than the superstitious.
Reblogged this on Sarvodaya and commented:
Beautiful!