COMPOUND EYE Definition & Meaning

compound eye

noun

an arthropod eye subdivided into many individual, light-receptive elements, each including a lens, a transmitting apparatus, and retinal cells.

compound eye

noun

the convex eye of insects and some crustaceans, consisting of numerous separate light-sensitive units (ommatidia) See also ocellus

compound eye

An eye consisting of hundreds or thousands of tiny light-sensitive parts (called ommatidia), with each part serving to focus light on the retina to create a portion of an image. Most insects and some crustaceans have compound eyes.

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�y��vlog History and Origins

Origin of compound eye¹

First recorded in 1830–40

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

In contrast, the smaller eyespots in certain chitons function more like individual pixels, or the compound eye of an insect, forming a visual sensor distributed over the chiton's shell.

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These lenses, though, belong not to a compound eye but to polydimethylsiloxane -- a flexible polymer long ranking as a favored playground of Nebraska's Stephen Morin and his band of fellow chemists.

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Starting with the photosensors in the insects’ large, compound eyes, the engineers traced the circuits through the various layers of neurons and into the brain.

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Animals with compound eyes have an essentially pixelated view of the world, Ms. Jenkins said, with each facet of the eye delivering a separate pixel.

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It gives you a staccato series of micro-impressions, as if you were looking through a fly’s compound eyes.

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