Connected on 2007-10-18 13:00:00 from Yarmouth, Maine, USA
- 12:28pm
- Bugscope Team milkweed bug i caught on my screen door
- Bugscope Team Hello Karin!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Teacher Thanks, Cate. We are just waiting for our technology coordinator to come and help us out.
- Bugscope Team Cool. We are getting a few more presets done.
- Teacher Do you need me to do anything right now?
- 12:33pm
- Bugscope Team NO
- Bugscope Team Oops.
- Bugscope Team That was emphatic.
- Bugscope Team No we are fine and it looks like if things are working for you now you are in great shape.
- Bugscope Team Can you see both the chat window and the presets, to the right, as well as the image on the screen?
- 12:38pm
- 12:43pm
- Teacher Hi, it's Cathy, are you OK to start early?
- Bugscope Team i think we are ready for ya. hi cathy!
- Bugscope Team You bet we are ready.
- Teacher Hi again!
- Bugscope Team session is unlocked, go ahead and take control. welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team the wing edge has these spines on it that look like they could cut Saran Wrap or aluminum foil
- Bugscope Team Cathy/Karin let us know if you have any questions.
- Bugscope Team missing a few limbs
- Bugscope Team poor girl
- Bugscope Team yes, one of the limbs is broken off near the socket. it's the right limbs. cool!
- Teacher Julia wants to know if the fly wings cover the back of the fly on the side we can't see?
Bugscope Team yes, the wings are on the underside of the fly which we can't see. insects are usually more interesting on their underside, that's why we put them on their backs.
- Bugscope Team do we havde any fly crutches?
- 12:49pm
- Teacher Why are is the fly so hairy?
Bugscope Team most insects are VERY hairy. those hairs are called setae, and they help the insect to sense their enviroment:: finding food, not hitting a big wall when flying, etc.
- Teacher Do you know how many hairs it has?
- Teacher How do the hairs grow? It even has hairs on its wings.
- Bugscope Team flies aren't the only ones that are full of "hair" (which BTW on insects we call setae)
- Bugscope Team a lot of insects are often hairier than they seem at first
- Bugscope Team Some of the hairs (setae) are mechanosensory, some are chemosensory, and some are probably there to give the wing and body more surface area to catch the air when it flies.
- Bugscope Team So they have, as Alex says, setae that function like nerve endings do for us.
- Teacher How sharp are the spiny bumps?
Bugscope Team They are not sharp to our fingers...you might not even be able to tell they are spiny
- Bugscope Team This is because they cannot sense their environment through the chitin -- the exoskeleton -- like we sense our environment using our skin.
- Bugscope Team you can take the mag up and see
- Bugscope Team i hope i answered that right
- Bugscope Team sharpness, when the STM guys assess it, has to do with the radius of curvature at the tip of the object
- Bugscope Team annie is being modest. she is an expert on insects...
- Bugscope Team really?! That is interesting
- Bugscope Team if they were too sharp they might break, as we will see with the yellowjacket stinger
- Bugscope Team bing!
- 12:54pm
- Bugscope Team i suposed this was too sharp then. very cool.
- Teacher Was the stinger bent when it stung someone or was it always that way?
- Bugscope Team this probably happened after the insect died
- Teacher How many eggs can a wasp lay?
Bugscope Team As usual, my answer starts with: it depends. There are thousands of species of wasps in the world. Yellowjackets hornet and paper wasps make up only a small small part of the total wasp species in the world. Yellowjackets and hornets are in the same family, and a gyne (which is different than a queen, because there can be more than one) can probably lay several hundred eggs in a season. Paper wasps gynes usually lay less. It is a pretty complicated subject...as you can tell.
- Bugscope Team it looks like the tip of the stinger broke
- Bugscope Team if you look at it close up oyu can see that it does not remain planted in you -- this yellowjacket can sting repeatedly.
- Bugscope Team thats why wasps are much worse than bees sometimes
- Bugscope Team if it was to remain planted in you it might have recurved spines to keep it from pulling out easily, sort of like the radula, or whatever it is called, on the tick
- Bugscope Team assuming you arent deathly allergic to a bee sting that is
- Teacher Why is it so sharp?
- Bugscope Team a queen wasp can mate with a male wasp, and keep the sperm in a dormant state for months. when spring arrives, the sperm will then be released and the firtilization can begin.
- Teacher How long did you need to go to school to be an entomologist?
Bugscope Team I went to undergraduate school for four years and graduated with a biology degree. It took me two years after that to get my masters and I am still working on my PhD. I hope to be finished in another year and a half or so.
- Bugscope Team I think sharpness is for the ability to penetrate and deliver the toxin, and it must be balanced against making it too easy to fracture.
- 12:59pm
- Bugscope Team Some wasps are parasitic, and they sting and deliver eggs into their eggs' future host.
Bugscope Team but hosts that usually harmful for a garden or something, not a human
- Teacher How long can bumblebees live if they don't sting anybody?
Bugscope Team Most bumblebees will only live one season: from the late spring until the fall. Future queens will overwinter as adults and will live for about a year.
- Bugscope Team It seems like most of those wasps are very small
Bugscope Team There are some large parasitoid wasps...such as ichneumonids in the genus Megarhyssa and Rhyssa
- Bugscope Team I kind of remember annie talking about that once
- Teacher IF a bumblebee or a wasp or yellow jacket is dead and you touch its stinger can it still harm you?
Bugscope Team I guess technically it could...but it seems really unlikely. If it is a bee stinger with a barb, it could get stuck in your finger, but it won't be able to inject venom into your skin, so it wouldn't hurt very much.
- Bugscope Team yes Cate is right. Humans are not normally hosts for baby wasps.
- Bugscope Team maybe if it was fresh dead and pushed it in, but I think they ordinarily have to pump the poison in.
- Bugscope Team I suppose you could accidentally sting yourself, I don't know if you would get the venom though
- Teacher Welearned that dragonfly eyes have about 30,000 facets, would that be true of this one?
- Bugscope Team you can still focus this a little
- Bugscope Team if you want
- Bugscope Team this is a very small dragonfly
- 1:04pm
- Teacher So, would it have fewer facets?
- Teacher What are all those little "dirt" things on the screen
- Bugscope Team if the facets (ommatidia) are smaller with a smaller head, I guess it could have 30,000
- Bugscope Team we would have to compare the sizes of ommatidia to get a better idea
- Bugscope Team some of the dirt really is dirt
- Bugscope Team in some cases we will see things that are in the dirt, like diatoms
- Bugscope Team or brochosomes
- Bugscope Team brochosomes are tiny (few hundred nanometers in diameter, usually) wax-like particles that look like tiny soccer balls
- Teacher Are dragonflies able to clean their lenses like we can with our eyelids?
Bugscope Team they can use their legs to clean their eyes.
- Bugscope Team good work controlling the scope cathy, very nice pan-out there...
- Teacher Do dragonflies blnik?
- Bugscope Team they do not have eyelids
- Bugscope Team it has a tiny claw, sort of like a T rex
- Teacher Do dragonflies sleep?
Bugscope Team They are only active during the day. When the sun goes down, they find a perch to stay the night. Insects do have circadian rhythms, and their genes tell us that they do "sleep", but we don't yet understand what "sleep" it to them.
- Bugscope Team this claw has dirt on it and I think part of a diatom
- 1:09pm
- Teacher Are the spikes on the legs setae?
- Bugscope Team I think they could be called sensory setae -- mechanosensory setae.
- Bugscope Team It doesn't involved warm milk and PJs though
- Bugscope Team when you look at a cross section of the head of one of these big-eyed insects you can see that much of the brain is given over to processing visual data
- Teacher WHat are the holes we see to the left of the dragonfly eye?
Bugscope Team that is the carbon tape we use to stick the little critters to
- Bugscope Team Those are bubbles in the carbon tape we stick the insects to.
- Teacher The legs look like they have little sharp claws on them like a crab.
- Bugscope Team you will also see smoother areas where Cate, who made today's sample, put silver paint down to help get the critters to stick and to form a conductive pathway for the electrons to shed to ground.
- Teacher Why are the eyes on the side of the head?
Bugscope Team The position of the eyes helps the dragonfly to see in nearly all directions around it. This good sense of vision helps them to catch prey and to avoid predators.
- 1:15pm
- Teacher How old can a dragonfly live to be?
Bugscope Team larger dragonflies can live up to four months
- Bugscope Team the dragonfly can see very well to the side, front and back. they are very good at manuevering in the air
- Bugscope Team Really it can see well in almost any direction.
- Bugscope Team maneuvering sp.
- Teacher How far away can a dragonfly see? We have a a few ideas that it's 30 feet, but we're not sure.
- Bugscope Team good question : )
- Teacher If dragonflies can smell, where exactly on their bodies do they smell?
Bugscope Team I am not sure if anyone has determined if dragonflies respond to any airbourne scents. If they could smell, they would do so with specially modified setae
- Bugscope Team and those setae could be anywhere
- 1:20pm
- Teacher We're having trouble getting to 9- milkweed bug torso
- Bugscope Team I found a reference for spiders being able to see dragonflies at 3 m, but it is hard to tell how soon the dragonfly saw the spider
- Bugscope Team well the no. 8 preset worked but we had trouble with no 9 as well
- Teacher It looks like it has lines sort of like a straw with lines or gray celery. Is that true?
Bugscope Team superficially it does resemble celery, but it is more like a straw. The inside of the setae are hollow (usually)
- Bugscope Team you might try preset 9 again. the dragonfly preset was very close to the edge, and maybe that caused the problem with preset 9.
- Teacher What are we looking at? It looks like a brain.
- Bugscope Team frass
- Bugscope Team decrease the magnification a bit and you will get a better look at the specimen
- Teacher What's that??
- Bugscope Team not sure; at first it looked like a pollen grain
- Bugscope Team this is cool
- Bugscope Team it's a foot!
- 1:25pm
- Bugscope Team frass is bug poop, which that was not, probably
- Bugscope Team those look like detached eyeballs under the claw...
- Teacher Are there suctions cups on the left side?
Bugscope Team Sort of like suction cups...they do help the insect to stick to surfaces
- Teacher What object could you compare its size to?
- Bugscope Team this is the foot of a milkweed bug
- Bugscope Team looks like the span of the claw is about 0.2 mm
- Teacher How many tarsals does one foot have?
Bugscope Team The number of tarsi on a leg varied between insect families and can vary within a single beetle. Some insects have three tarsi on one set of legs and four on the other sets of legs. It look slike this guy has maybe 3 or 4 tarsal segments
- Teacher Are all of you in the same laboratory right now?
Bugscope Team no, all of us are in seperate rooms. annie is in another building.
- Bugscope Team Some of us are close enough to be able to yell at each other. Alex is next to the microscope.
- 1:30pm
- Bugscope Team not that we ever yell at each other.... :)
- Bugscope Team good job!
- Bugscope Team you guys would have to yell pretty loud for me to hear you!
- Bugscope Team We could not do that before.
- Bugscope Team considering you are half a mile away and underground
- Bugscope Team Annie prefers to telecommute.
- Bugscope Team cool, preset 9 works now. not sure what the problem was, a bug in the scope i believe...
- Bugscope Team We are looking at the head of the milkweed bug
- Bugscope Team that way she can get other work done
- Teacher It looks like an elephant. Does it have facets in its eyes, just like dragonflies?
- Bugscope Team so lovely
- Bugscope Team you can go check
- Bugscope Team you can see its pointy mouth. All of the members of the family of which the milkweed bus is a member have sucking mouthparts
- Bugscope Team ocelli?
- Bugscope Team yeah! thanks annie
- Teacher What are the markings on the eyes?
Bugscope Team The little marks look like dirt to me
- Bugscope Team yeah ocelli are the simple eyes.
- Bugscope Team milkweed BUG!
- Bugscope Team ai yai yai, I am having some typing problems today.
- Bugscope Team we could go look at the marks as well -- they look like some kind of juju on the surface
- Bugscope Team yeah juju
- Bugscope Team excellent focus there cathy!
- Teacher Do these milkweed bugs eat milkweed?
Bugscope Team Milkweed bugs suck juices out of milkweed plants. Milkweed plants are toxic and the milkweed bugs have developed an ability to detoxify the poisons. In fact, the milkweed bugs store the poison they get from their food in their bodies....which makes THEM toxic (or at least foul tasting) to predators
- 1:35pm
- Bugscope Team hard to tell what that is
- Teacher Can they feel what's on their eyes?
- Bugscope Team you can see there are a couple of small setae on the eye that are probably sensory
- Bugscope Team fruit flies have lots of sensory setae at the junctions of the ommatidia
- Bugscope Team so if that obstruction touched the setae, then it'd know it was there. and it would be able to see the obstruction. but not feel it, i think.
- Teacher Were we looking at its rostrum before? One student learned about this while studying a stink bug.
Bugscope Team yes, exactly!
- Bugscope Team anyway the setae we see are like to be mechanosensors
- Bugscope Team I think that could also be termed a rostrum; I am not sure
- Bugscope Team near the top
- Teacher It seems stuck.
- Bugscope Team what we see is the claw in front of the body, where those little pollen grains are
- Bugscope Team okay, i moved the scope a bit, try again.
- Teacher We know that we started earlier with you all, so we're thinking about 3 more minutes.
- 1:40pm
- Bugscope Team is it better now?
- Bugscope Team We are really fine to 2 here, all up to you.
- Bugscope Team cathy, are you able to... yes, cool. scope works.
- Teacher The image isn't chaning
- Teacher YAy!
- Bugscope Team :)
- Bugscope Team yay!
- Bugscope Team ocelli
- Bugscope Team ocelli at 12 o'clock!
- Bugscope Team now you can see the simple eyes on top of the head
- Bugscope Team and the compound eyes
- Bugscope Team and the mandibles
- Bugscope Team those are pretty bodacious mandibles
- Teacher we're confused. Does this have a simple eye anc compound eyes?
Bugscope Team Yes, many insects have both simple AND compound eyes.
- Bugscope Team yes both; it has like five eyes
- Bugscope Team yep! go north a bit, then you'll see the simple eye's (ocelli) near the top of it's head, inbetween the compund eyes
- Bugscope Team the simple eyes help it judge distances, keep oriented up and down
- 1:45pm
- Bugscope Team yeah that is a fearsome mandible
- Teacher Our last one is to look a this dragonfly wing
- Bugscope Team oh that is cool
- Bugscope Team it looks like rice paper
- Teacher Can the wing be damaged easily?
Bugscope Team They are surprisingly strong, however they can get ripped or tear...especially if a bird tries to take a bite out of them
- Bugscope Team they are pretty tough, but you can see lots of scratches
- Bugscope Team No, you are right Scott...they are veins!
- Bugscope Team dragonflies have four wings and are evolutionarily pretty old
- Teacher Do you know how long there have been dragonflies on the earth?
- Bugscope Team They can't fold their wings over their backs
- Bugscope Team so they pump fluids through them -- do they have hemolymph?
- Teacher It looks like the ribs are in two pieces.
- Bugscope Team they have existed since prehistoric times, not sure which era they first popped up tho
- Bugscope Team about 380 million years (we think). Have to check!
- Teacher What are the bumpy things on the ribs?
- Bugscope Team very close annie, wikipedia says the oldest known dragonfly species is 320 million years old!
- Bugscope Team I would like to find a dinosaur tick.
- Bugscope Team woo hoo!
- 1:50pm
- Bugscope Team Annie on one side, Wikipedia on the other. She could win out.
- Teacher What was the largest dragonfly ever found?
Bugscope Team The ancient griffenfly (which is not a TRUE dragonfly) is thought to have had a wingspan of 28 inches!
- Teacher What is the most interesting insect specimen you have ever see?
- Bugscope Team nope...I checked my book...the first true dragoflies are thought to have evolved about 250 million years ago. Precursors to modern dragonflies first appear in the fossil record about 350 million years ago
- Bugscope Team what I like, generally, still, is earwigs, which often have mites, but the mites are not insects
- Teacher THANK YOU!! If you could hear us, we'd say thank you as loud as we could. We're going to keep sketching and learning about insects.
- Bugscope Team http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthropoda/uniramia/odonatoida.html
- Bugscope Team great job! it was a pleaseure doing bugscope with you!
- Teacher We appreciate all of your help and knowledge.
- Bugscope Team Thank you all for the questions! I liked looking up that info on the giant "dragonfly"
- 1:56pm
- Teacher Are you able to add our project title? Insects: More Than Meets the Eye.
- Bugscope Team do you mean add that title to your member page?
- Bugscope Team ack!
- Bugscope Team i'll email karin about the project title, i think we can do that no problem.
- Bugscope Team hello Mark!
- Bugscope Team bye everyone!!!!
- Bugscope Team cya annie
- Bugscope Team Bye Annie. Thank you!
- Bugscope Team mark is done gone
- 2:01pm
- Bugscope Team shall i close the session, mark just left.
- Bugscope Team gone Daddy gone
- Bugscope Team closing the session now
- Bugscope Team leaving session active for now
- Bugscope Team someone may join us.
- Bugscope Team nevermind. closing session.
- Bugscope Team session closed
