left, Cambropachycope clarksoni. right, some little scribbly drawings of diving (and maybe flying or gliding?) animals with one compound eye. i'm imagining them in a niche like cormorants- they perch along the edge of the water, and then dive in when they see prey. stronger swimmers than fliers.
i'm tentatively planning a clade of things which are related to the [metal eaters], with either holoptic compound eyes (two which meet in the middle) or a single compound eye, probably schizochroal with in-eye depth perception.
schizochroal eyes existed once in trilobites and something similar exists in one group of flies. they're a family of compound eyes with fairly separate lenses. i've seen some people conjecture they evolved for good depth perception or dim light.
each individual unit (ommatidium) had a calcite(!) lens and likely could focus light fairly well internally. but what do you do with that much data? who knows! i'm not a specialist but i'd hazard you could get good info about things like depth by comparisons across the eye locally.
my favorite reference is this: www.researchgate.net/publication/...
this site has some neat info on trilobites specifically. www.trilobites.info/eyes.htm look at the images here of Erbenochile erbeni! how beautiful. a lot of schizochroal eyes were mounted to give a wide field of view.
pearlescent crèches made of rubbery skin that cling to craggy rocks in shoreline coves and house their tadpole-like young
I enjoy these creatures
I love it when your sketches pop up in my feed 💖
thank you!