Ommatidia

An insect's compound eye is made up of many individual units packed together to form the surface of the eye. These units are hexagonal in shape and called ommatidea (singular ommatidium). Each eye can have more than a thousand ommatidea.

Each ommatidia has several photoreceptors and these allow the compound eye to form a mosaic image.

A photograph of the head of a woodworm beetle (Anobium punctatum) showing the compound eye and ommatidia.
Photograph by Siga licensed under Creative Commons.

Related terms

• Compound eye
• Facet
• Fovea
• Head
• Ocelli

Related groups of terms

• Invertebrate body structure

Related pages on this web site

• Insect body structure

See other words beginning with O