Connected on 2007-05-11 10:45:00 from Robinson, Illinois, USA
- 10:44am
- Bugscope Team same painted lady larvae
- Bugscope Team they will probably all look like this, dontcha think?
- Bugscope Team they more or less do, yeah. except one has the 4 eyes nicely visible
- Bugscope Team Hi Lori!
- Teacher hello
- Teacher we're all here.
- Bugscope Team Does everything seem to be working alright?
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Bugscope Team excellent
- Teacher Should I adjust with the controls?
- Bugscope Team Well, we're ready to get started whenever you are. You should see the controls to the right of the image, and the presets below them
- Bugscope Team Yes, feel free to get comfortable with what each one does
- Bugscope Team We also provide "presets", saved positions on the sample that we found particularly interesting. If you ever get lost or bored you can load one of them up and start exploring from there
- 10:49am
- Teacher Okay. We've moved it around.
- Bugscope Team Try using the "Click to Center" tool
- Teacher Can you tell us what we're looking at now?
- Bugscope Team This is one of the larva you sent us!
- Teacher Okay, that works
- Bugscope Team this one is a more mangled looking one, there are 2 straighter ones you can find
- Bugscope Team Feel free to forward any questions the kids might have. If things seem to be running smoothly there, you could let some kids login on other machines too
- Bugscope Team you can either use the presets or drive down to find them
- Bugscope Team We've got an entomologist (Annie) logged on who gives great answers
- Bugscope Team haha, sometimes!
- Bugscope Team EVERY time. heh.
- Bugscope Team except when I can't tell what the insect is because it is GIANT
- Bugscope Team treadway, if you have any questions or problems, please feel free to ask, we are here to help you get the most out of this experience!
- Teacher Question from Hannah: Do you cut the larva before you put in under the microscope?
Bugscope Team no they were pretty small, so I left them alone
- 10:54am
- Teacher Question from class: What party of the larva are we looking at now?
Bugscope Team this is the body--the hairy top part
- Teacher *What part
- Bugscope Team They schrivel up a lot from air-drying. To get the best results we typically store them in ethanol and then use a machine called a Critical Point Drier to dry them out
- Bugscope Team Hi You Guys.
- Teacher Hello Scott
- Bugscope Team Hi Scott! Scott's joining us from Texas
- Bugscope Team I'm in Riley's studio.
- Bugscope Team do you feel inspired?
- Bugscope Team Yeah this does look shriveled.
- Bugscope Team Yeah Man.
- Bugscope Team the best preserved part of this caterpillar is the mouth---you can see its jaws if you drive to the northwest
- Bugscope Team A lot of the structure here is lost, but the legs are still pretty prominent
- Bugscope Team The microscope is about the size of a large desk.
- Bugscope Team It has its own water, air, electrical power, nitrogen, and air conditioning.
- Bugscope Team it is nicer than my apartment!
- Bugscope Team the 3 larva presets are for each of the larva you sent us
- Bugscope Team You can watch a video about how we prepare the samples and there is part of it where you see us working at the microscope: http://virtual.itg.uiuc.edu/training/esem-prep.mov
- Bugscope Team Chas is right, however, about the microscope itself -- the business part of it -- it's about the size of a fridge.
- Teacher I think i've lost control of the microscope
- Bugscope Team this is the edge of the stub
- Bugscope Team What's the symptom?
- Teacher The stub?
- Bugscope Team You can see we're at the edge.
- Bugscope Team the stub is what we put the bugs on
- Bugscope Team The stub is the piece of metal we place all of the samples on
- Teacher We were trying to move to see the mouth. Can you move us to the mouth?
- 10:59am
- Bugscope Team Can you choose a preset to get there?
- Bugscope Team I would try going back to preset #6
- Bugscope Team try preset 7
- Teacher The pictures aren't updating too fast for us. We're having problem moving. Okay.
- Bugscope Team ah, treadway, when you click to drive, make sure of this: click once to start moving, then you must click again to STOP moving, otherwise it will keep moving in the direction of your first click. this is how the microscope works when you are sitting in front of it as well. we tried to make the interface here just like the real one.
- Bugscope Team Oop.
- Teacher tyring to move to preset 6 right now
- Bugscope Team great
- Bugscope Team good idea
- Bugscope Team oh I see something now
- Bugscope Team OOF I bet
- Bugscope Team this is the result of a preset?
- Teacher yes
- Teacher preset 6 was black... preset 7 is this.
- Bugscope Team hmm, try another preset, that one looks bad.
- Bugscope Team not so cool
- Bugscope Team OH
- Bugscope Team sorry treadway, we are working on it.
- Bugscope Team yeah, someone needs to hit OK to the error dialog about out of bounds XY
- Teacher Question from Karly: How big is the lens?
Bugscope Team lens of the microscope? It's a totally different kind of microscope than you're used to seeing because it manipulates electrons instead of light (photons). The lens is only about as big around as a soda can
Bugscope Team And instead of being glass, it's wound wires with electrical current passing through; an electromagnet
- Bugscope Team sorry, an error came up here when we reached the edge of the stage. we're working to resolve it, one second
- Bugscope Team The lenses for this microscope are magnetic coils.
- Teacher Thank you
- Bugscope Team Instead of light we are using electrons to image the samples. And the samples must be in a vacuum chamber.
- Bugscope Team We think we drove so far off the stage that the presets even stopped working, once we got back on the stage, things are working okay.
- Bugscope Team In a way the microscope is like a TV, pointed downward.
- 11:05am
- Bugscope Team And the samples are inside of the TV.
- Teacher Can I move to preset 8?
- Bugscope Team sure, give it a try
- Bugscope Team Yeah go for it!
- Bugscope Team Go ahead!
- Bugscope Team hah, 4x the responses!
- Bugscope Team coolness!
- Bugscope Team Spider head?
- Bugscope Team see the bumps in a line, these are the eyes
- Bugscope Team this is another larva
- Bugscope Team Oh that's why I was thinking it was a spider. Larvae don't follow the insect body rules.
- Bugscope Team From wikipedia apparently the number of eye spots here can help identify which specific species it is from several that look similar
- Bugscope Team really
- Teacher Question from Barbara: Why are the eyes bumped out like that?
Bugscope Team Our eyes would look like that too except they're recessed back into our eye-sockets. The shape acts like a lens to focus the light
- Bugscope Team I could catch a lot of mosquitos down here.
- Bugscope Team The eyes collest more light when they have that shape.
- Bugscope Team collect
- Bugscope Team Probably the caterpillar cannot see very well.
- Bugscope Team This is cool. You can see the jaws, closed together.
- Teacher Question from Shelby: What do the hairs do?
- Bugscope Team They are hinged like a gate and have sharp edges.
- Bugscope Team Annie just submitted an abstract with that title!
- Bugscope Team Here you can see the jaws--the mandibles
- Bugscope Team doh
- Bugscope Team The hairs are sensory, similar to cat or rat whiskers.
- Bugscope Team this is what I was thinking of, about the eyespots: "The American Painted Lady (V. virginiensis) is most easily distinguishable by its two large eyespots on the ventral side, whereas cardui has four small eyespots."
- Bugscope Team I did...that's the name of my ESA talk!
- Bugscope Team wait tho Chas: is that the larva of the adult?
- Bugscope Team Some of then hairs, which we call 'setae,' are chemosensory, meaning that the insect uses them to smell the air.
- 11:10am
- Bugscope Team some of the hairs are mechanosensory and some are chemosensory
- Bugscope Team Because adult butterflies have eyespots on their wings which are used to distinguish species
- Teacher Question from Haley: What is the line coming down the middle? What the jaws are around.
Bugscope Team Looks like a piece of junk to me... maybe we could zoom in on it for a better look
- Bugscope Team eyespots on wings make predators think big eyes are looking right at them -- they are intended to be frightening
- Bugscope Team Hard to tell what that is.
- Teacher We think it's old food =)
- Bugscope Team could be
- Bugscope Team You can see a fungal fiber to the top left. It looks like a blade of grass.
- Bugscope Team heh, like speks of bread in an old mans beard.
- Teacher We're all going to start brushing our teeth at lest twice daily now.
- Bugscope Team Yeah you are right it could be leftovers.
- Bugscope Team You could get this sharper with the focus adjustment
- Bugscope Team You never know when someone could be looking in your mouth.
- Teacher This class is out of time
- Teacher I do have a couple questions about the system real quick
- Bugscope Team Hello Daniel-San.
- Teacher before the next class comes in
- Bugscope Team go ahead...
- Bugscope Team The mosquitos have found me, down here.
- Teacher the presets... can you explain the different presets? like the ant comb?
- Bugscope Team Got to hold my breath.
- Bugscope Team Sorry I'm late. I had a bunch of people that needed assistance with ImageJ. And now someone has shown up for orientation. Foo. I'll be back when that's done.
- 11:15am
- Teacher these have nothing to do with the larva do they?
- Bugscope Team The comb is an arrangement of setae, probably used for cleaning?
- Bugscope Team The any comb is a feature on two of the ant's forelimbs that helps it clean its antennae.
- Bugscope Team No, just value-added specimens
- Teacher so the larva is the last two presets?
- Bugscope Team We figured the larvae might not have sustaining interest.
- Bugscope Team last three
- Teacher or last 3 ( 6 7 and 8 )
- Teacher cool
- Teacher next class is coming in now
- Teacher this is the computer tech by the way
- Bugscope Team We always add a few things in case something doesn't look good or charges up with electrons.
- Teacher lori is talking to the class
- Bugscope Team And then she's going to run bugscope with the next class too?
- Bugscope Team yo tech person, i'm a techie too.
- Teacher =)
- Teacher i'm ryan
- Bugscope Team alex
- Bugscope Team so, what do you think of windows aero....
- Bugscope Team just kidding, don't answer that
Bugscope Team yeah, we don't want any profanity ;-)
- Bugscope Team ha!
- Teacher class is here
- Bugscope Team great! we're ready
- Bugscope Team okay! lets roll!
- Bugscope Team now you can get a perspective of the head of this larva.
- Bugscope Team eyes
- Bugscope Team primitive eyes
- 11:21am
- Teacher Question from Tristen: What are the bumps on the head?
- Bugscope Team those are its eyes
- Teacher Question from Ryan: What are the hairs?
Bugscope Team The hairs serve a lot of purposes, many of them being sensory. Some feel vibrations/wind, some are chemosensory like our sense of smell
- Teacher hairs on the eyes...
- Bugscope Team The hairs are like little feelers --- they let the insect feel things that are touching it.
- Bugscope Team we call the hairs 'setae,' pronounced see-tee
- Teacher Question from AJ: What are the crater looking things in the top right of the image?
Bugscope Team I think that is the pit where the caterpillar's antennae are inserted
- Bugscope Team Maybe we can drive over there to look more closely.
- Bugscope Team Or even go to a lower mag, slightly, to get a better overall view.
- Bugscope Team try click to center, then click on the part you are interested in knowing more about.
- Bugscope Team Can you drive the microscope to do that?
- Teacher We're trying to drive over now.
- Bugscope Team click to center might work better
- Bugscope Team click again to stop moving
- Teacher It's hard becuase it updates so slow
- Bugscope Team Alex is right -- that is sort of like a turret, or a ball-and-socket device so the antennae can swivel.
- Bugscope Team Yeah... I imagine
- Bugscope Team Click to center might be better than click to drive.
- Bugscope Team d'oh
- Bugscope Team But then you can still navigate yourselves. If that's still too slow, we can move around for you
- Teacher a lot easier
- 11:26am
- Bugscope Team ah, that looks nice!
- Teacher thanks!
- Teacher Question from Duncan: Why does it look broken? Or why are there so many cracks in it?
Bugscope Team Often times there is a coating, either from the bug, or junk it got into. When it dries out it shrivels and the coating on the surface cracks
- Bugscope Team some of this stuff is crusty residue that probably was not on the critter all the time it was alive
- Bugscope Team so, what is the crusty residue, dust?
Bugscope Team it might be a combination of hydrocarbons and oils that the insect secretes that accumulated after it died
- Bugscope Team dirt?
- Teacher moving to the mandibles
- Teacher we figured it dried up when it died
- Bugscope Team It's some film that was once wet and then dried.
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Teacher Question from Tessa: What are the spikey things we're looking at now?
- Bugscope Team The big spikey things are the jaws, which are hinged like a gate.
- 11:33am
- Teacher Question from Kyrah: What is the ribbon looking thing going across the jaws?
Bugscope Team It's hard to say, but it's not part of the ant. Most likely something that grew on it or that it picked up from the box it was in
- Bugscope Team The spikes are the "teeth" of the mandibles, seen interlocking here down the middle of the image
- Bugscope Team the ribbon like thing is probably fungal hyphae
- Bugscope Team it is a strand of fungus
- Bugscope Team Cool!
- Teacher Question from Ryan: Please explain what the Palp is.
Bugscope Team I actually think this is the end of one of the larval prolegs
- Bugscope Team notice that the palp is very small, we are looking at it with 6480 X magnification! now 13K X!!!
- Bugscope Team A palp is a modified limb near the mouth that helps the insect feel or taste its food
- Bugscope Team The part we're looking at is about 10x smaller across than a human hair!
- Bugscope Team But, to answer the question: a palp is an appendange attached to the insect's mouth....d'oh
- Bugscope Team only 4 microns (millionths of a meter)
- Bugscope Team You can see that this one has a hollow center.
- Bugscope Team But I don't think this is a palp people....
- Bugscope Team this is a foot
- Bugscope Team 4 microns is the length of two bacteria, end to end.
- Bugscope Team cool annie thanks for the clarification
- Bugscope Team No, we should have renamed it after we had you ID'd it
- Bugscope Team Let's take the mag down to see.
- Bugscope Team so this isn't near the mouth, but rather on the bottom, or lower part of the larva
- 11:38am
- Teacher We wanted to mag out to see what part of the body this was
- Bugscope Team yeah this is foot
- Bugscope Team that helped
- Bugscope Team nice
- Teacher we're trying to find some crochets
- Bugscope Team gnarly
- Teacher kids are having a good time =)
- Bugscope Team awesome, we are too
- Bugscope Team here you can see the spines at the end of the thoracis prolegs
- Bugscope Team look, you can see some claw typ things, yeah, what annie said
- Bugscope Team there are opposing claws too, right?
- Teacher Question from Mason: Why does it look like a cactus?
Bugscope Team Well cactus have many spines--and so does this insect. Except these spines are not for protection, like a cactus. In this insect, the spines are hairs that allow the insect to sense its environement
- Bugscope Team normally this would look spiney, but the spines would all be projecting outwards
- 11:43am
- Bugscope Team part of it is from the shriveling due to air-drying
- Bugscope Team Because this is shriveled -- because it dried and shriveled after the larva died -- the spines are often collapsed inwards
- Bugscope Team Some caterpillars do have stinging hairs for defense though
- Teacher Back to the eyes
- Teacher hold on, we have a class leaving
- 11:48am
- Teacher Question from Gabby: What are the bumps on the hairs? And the hooks?
- Bugscope Team The bumps are probably oily hydrocarbons either excreted by the insect or that it was rolling around in
- Bugscope Team The hook... harder to say. There are SO many different shapes and patterns you see the setae make, it's really quite amazing
- Bugscope Team Spider hairs are especially weird, we actually have a preset of them. There are even more interesting spider hairs but they're not visible on this sample
- Teacher we'll move there
- Bugscope Team because the spinnerettes (where the web comes out) are angled away from us
- Bugscope Team Spikey hairs are very common on spiders, so it's quite likely that it's a mechanical element which helps allow them to not stick to their own web
- Teacher Question from Gabby: Why are the spider Setas flat?
Bugscope Team I wish I knew a good reason. Not all of them are, some look like pipe-cleaners, too. There is so much variation in setae form just on one bug, it's difficult for us to always know
- 11:54am
- Bugscope Team I think it'd take years of study for each species to figure out why exactly the setae are shaped like they are
- Bugscope Team That "ribbon" is charging up with electrons and flexing slightly from the static forces, you can see it move just a little in each image
- Bugscope Team like when you put on a sweater and as you move you can feel this slight push/pull from the static, that's what's causing the movement here
- Bugscope Team wow, it's really moving around!
- Bugscope Team the glowing is also due to the "charging"
- 11:59am
- Bugscope Team It's also charging up, getting bright down in that hole, because the sputter-coating process that puts a conductive layer of metal on the sample didn't reach down in there
- Teacher Question from Brittney: What is the stuff round the hallow part of the foot?
Bugscope Team I think it's just a different texture in the exoskeleton, which is made of chitin
Bugscope Team although the really smooth stuff is probably something oily
- Bugscope Team i am backish
- Bugscope Team ok i am rea;;y back
- Bugscope Team welcome back
- Bugscope Team it could also be cuticular secretions
- Bugscope Team annie, what do the cuticular secretions do?
- Bugscope Team The secretions help to keep the insect waterproof and to keep it from drying out
- Teacher New class, moving back to the yes. Interested in the cuticular secretions too :)
- Bugscope Team keep water out, keep water in
- Bugscope Team well, I learned something new today :)
- Bugscope Team hehe
- 12:05pm
- Bugscope Team they also can play a role in communications...insects can "taste" compounds on the surface of other insects and determine whether that other insect is a member of the same species, or a male or a female
- Bugscope Team waterproofing is very important to insects
- Bugscope Team May devotes several lectures in insect ecology to talking about waxes and cuticles
- Bugscope Team wow... that would be pretty wild if humans had similar rituals
- Bugscope Team Very interesting texture to this part of the exoskeleton
- Bugscope Team yes indeed...it would be strange if we needed to taste eachother to figure out if we are members of the same species
- Teacher class leaving, hold on
- Bugscope Team what is this creature?
- Bugscope Team still a larva
- Bugscope Team I've lost track of where we are, but my best guess is we're on the larva
- Bugscope Team maybe than can zoom out if they don't know either
- Bugscope Team ok
- Teacher new class coming in
- Teacher mrs. treadway taking over the controls
- Bugscope Team great
- 12:11pm
- Teacher Question from Logan: What are the pointy ridges around the open place?
Bugscope Team It's hard to say whether this is the natural shape of the cuticle or an artifact from air-drying. This is most likely the deflated version of a texture that existed in the exoskeleton of the insect
- Bugscope Team if you can decrease the magnification a bit we might have a better idea what we are seeing here
- Bugscope Team maybe one more decrease in mag?
- 12:16pm
- Bugscope Team yeah, I think we're on the painted lady larva still
- Bugscope Team theres a lot of this 'wrinkly skin'
- Bugscope Team we are
- Bugscope Team this is a caterpillar...but it is really deflated, like a water balloon that has lost its water
- Teacher We think it is the painted lady, somewhere on the lower part.
- Bugscope Team to preserve them better, people will often immerse them directly into ethanol after collecting them. then we use a special method to remove the ethanol without disturbing the structure
- Bugscope Team back to the mandibles!
- Bugscope Team these are the jaws that the insect uses to bite off pieces of food
- 12:22pm
- Bugscope Team Most insects actually chew with other mouthparts that lie inside these jaws
- Teacher Question from Mrs. Harp: Do the mandibles go up and down, or side to side?
Bugscope Team in our view right now, they should swing open to the left and right
- Bugscope Team Annie, is there a general name for the inner mouthparts that they chew with?
- Bugscope Team i knew you were going to ask that
- Bugscope Team maxillae and hypopharanyx
- Bugscope Team no, I just had to check to make sure
- Bugscope Team thats a general name? :p
- Bugscope Team of course, there are all sorts of exceptions, modifications, etc.
- Bugscope Team those are the ones that creep me out the most if you see macro videography of something like a preying mantis eating
- Bugscope Team My book says that mandibles can also do some chewing
- 12:27pm
- Bugscope Team ooh yeah chas that is creepy
- Teacher Question from Rachel and Courtney: Are there 12 eyes?
Bugscope Team all insects have only two compound eyes for "seeing". There are variations in the number of simple eyes...which gives the insect information about day length and position of the sun.
- Bugscope Team from what I see,there are 4 big bumps and then a cluster of some smaller bumps on this side of the head, but im not sure
- Bugscope Team In caterpillars and some other larvae the compound eyes can be very reduced
- Bugscope Team yeah what annie said :)
- Bugscope Team ;)
- Bugscope Team You tend to see dramatic variation in the compound eye complexity based on how much they rely on the eyes. Underground dwellers like ants are very simple, flying insects very complex
- Bugscope Team spider head!
- Bugscope Team speaking of eyes
- 12:32pm
- Bugscope Team here you can see 8 eyes
- Bugscope Team Spiders don't have compound eyes, instead they usually have 8 of these single-lens eyes
- Bugscope Team you can see they're oriented so that the spider can see 360 degrees around him
- Bugscope Team or her
- Bugscope Team This is a small section of an individual scale from a moth wing
- Bugscope Team you can see it's very sparse, like netting, to reduce the weight while remaining strong
- Student i wish he had more time!
- Teacher Thank you so much for this session. All the classes really enjoyed it and learned a lot!
- Bugscope Team That you for the questions!
- Bugscope Team You can definitely apply again!
- Bugscope Team we learn things too, thanks to annie!
- Bugscope Team Yes, some great questions today and some nice moving around in spite of the slow connection
- Student i'm logging in on a few computers to see how the images update
Bugscope Team Great, that'll be good to know
- Bugscope Team I hope I am not teaching the WRONG things!
- Bugscope Team This was a good session..good driving!!
- Bugscope Team Yes, round of applause for Annie
- Bugscope Team please no....seriously
- Bugscope Team heh
- Teacher That was going to be my next question-we definitely want to do it again next year!
- Bugscope Team there's no limit, so feel free to apply whenever you'd like to do it again
- Bugscope Team Ok guys, I hate to run off right away...but I have to work on my field aeration setup. Fun times!
- Bugscope Team Talk to you all soon!!!!
- Bugscope Team hope you find more bugs today annie, cya
- Bugscope Team bye bye ;)
- Bugscope Team bye!
- 12:37pm
- Student thanks annie
- Student seems to be updating rather well on 6 computers
- Teacher Thanks again!!!
- Student wish we had more time to make it to the other presets
- Bugscope Team Yeah, they all seem to be keeping up from this end
- Bugscope Team You got to most of them. I can email Lori a URL with the chat transcript and images so you can review the stuff you saw today
- Teacher That would be great. I need to complete a survey, too, right?
- Student next time we'll try to have some student computers going
- Bugscope Team Yeah, I believe there's a link to that in one of the emails you got. If not, I can find it for you, just email me
- Student great system. thanks for everything.
- Bugscope Team that would be great
- Teacher Thanks. I will look through my emails and find it.
- Bugscope Team No problem, glad to have you guys on!
- Guest I am checking you out for a second grade session
- Teacher Is there anything else we need to do today?
- Bugscope Team Nope, you guys are all done
- Bugscope Team Cathye, are you from Lincoln Grade School or somewhere else?
- Guest Nags Head North Carolina
- Student beautiful part of the country
- Student i miss duck
- Teacher Good bye!
- Bugscope Team Would you like to try it out for minute, we still have a little time left?
- Bugscope Team Bye Lori & Ryan
- Student thanks again, great work bugscopers people.
- Guest can you hold for one minute
- Bugscope Team Thanks ryan, hope to see you on again soon
- 12:42pm
- Bugscope Team Cathye: sure
- Teacher do you need me to control? or as i good to log out?
- Teacher *or am i good to log out?
- Teacher dohhh
- Bugscope Team You're free to log out!
- Teacher bye then
- Guest we would like to try
- Bugscope Team OK cathye, the controls should have shown up on your end, to the right of the image
- Bugscope Team cathye you've got scope control, try driving around a bit
- Bugscope Team k you have control
- Bugscope Team he ahead and try them out
- Bugscope Team oops, "go ahead" rather
- Bugscope Team cool, you increased mag
- Bugscope Team This is a sample stage that we've prepared with three larva the last class sent us as well as some insects we added from our own collection
- Bugscope Team You can jump to some spots we identified as interesting by clicking on the preset images to the lower right
- Bugscope Team That's one of the ant limbs
- Bugscope Team We had an entomology student on chat with us earlier helping answer questions about the bugs
- Guest Cathy: The class will love this!
- 12:47pm
- Bugscope Team Great! We look forward to seeing an application from you
- Bugscope Team well, let's get you signed up then. visit bugscope.itg.uiuc.edu to apply. you haven't applied yet have you?
- Guest Do we have enough time to send in specimens and schedule lab before June 1?
- Bugscope Team I believe so. You can request a date and time in the application and our secretary will check the calendar for us
- Guest Thank you, I will.
- Bugscope Team We should probably start tearing down on our end, but it was good to hear from you!
- 12:52pm
- Guest Thanks for the practice time.
- Guest bye
- Bugscope Team No problem, cya
