Fortunately, Gigantiops in the field look back at you with a “What are you looking at?” look, rather than the “You want a piece of me, punk!” look of Myrmecia ants.

Very interesting point about the developmental evolution of blindness in workers as well!

Functionally, once you are down to a few vestigial ommatidia it makes no difference if the cuticle immediately above the working photoreceptors is shaped into lenses or not– at this point the eyes are only sensing light intensity.

Now, the evolution of blindness in workers is a tricky subject in ants because, as I am sure you know, with a few exceptions the queen caste always has well developed eyes (as is the case in Cryptomyrmex). This is relevant given that the difference in caste morphology within females is the results of differential expression during development due to environmental cues. I think we still don’t have a good understanding of the plasticity of this kind of features of the caste polymorphic system.

Congratulations for this wonderful piece of ant morphology!

Do you know the interesting case of the Neotropical leaf litter ant species Cryptomyrmex longinodus? These ants were described by Fernández & Brandão (2003) from workers collected in Amazonian Brazil. In some workers, the ommatidia lenses are virtually absent, although pale pigments are clearly visible under the reflective light, but not under SEM images. Could it represent a step towards eye loss in the evolution of this group?

All the best!

Todo parece indicar que las hormigas obreras ancestrales tenían ojos compuestos grandes y bien desarrollados, similares a los de la casta reina.

Un buen ejemplo es Sphecomyrma freyi. Fósiles en ámbar de esta especie extinta del Cretáceo muestran individuos, que claramente son obreras, con ojos bien desarrollados.