Connected on 2008-04-30 10:00:00 from Poteau, OK, US
- 8:57am
- Bugscope Team session enabled, rxl started
- Bugscope Team hey DaddyO
- Bugscope Team hi there
- 9:09am
- Bugscope Team venting scope, removing a juicy bug
- 9:16am
- Bugscope Team starting vac again
- Bugscope Team mite!
- Bugscope Team a few minutes ago we got a message about leaks in the pneumatic system on the 1st and 2nd floor. it is possible those could bring us down -- something to watch out for.
- 9:22am
- 9:29am
- 9:36am
- Bugscope Team At 3 your time -- 3 to 5 p.m.
- 9:41am
- Bugscope Team Abescope
- 9:48am
- Bugscope Team presets are done
- 9:53am
- 9:58am
- Bugscope Team hi kristin, welcome to bugscope!
- Teacher what are we looking at
- Bugscope Team this is a beetle
- Bugscope Team hey there welcome. If you have any questions let us know.
- Bugscope Team You can start by clicking on a preset in the lower right if you like
- Bugscope Team right in the center here you see a pattern of hexagons, and that is the eye
- Bugscope Team this is right next to the eye, there, to the left
- Bugscope Team this is a clubbed-end antenna
- Bugscope Team on a small beetle
- Teacher why do flys fly around you when you are hot
- Teacher what does the antenna do?
- Bugscope Team because, possibly, you smell particularly good to them at that time
- Bugscope Team maybe flys are attracted to the smell that humans give off when they perspire?
- Bugscope Team the antenna collects pheromones, for one thing, from the air
- Bugscope Team it is sensitive to chemical signals
- Bugscope Team this is the head of an ant, and one of its antennae is missing
- Teacher is the eye on the top middle
- Bugscope Team we are looking right into the mouth here
- Bugscope Team for ants, they leave behind chemical signals to let others know where food is, or where an enemy is
- 10:03am
- Bugscope Team there is a eye on the left top
- Bugscope Team a mound shape
- Teacher how much can a single ant carrie
- Bugscope Team with facets in it
- Bugscope Team the top middle is where an antenna broke off
- Bugscope Team It can lift 50x its weight
- Bugscope Team some of them can carry more than their own body weight
- Bugscope Team I don't know how much that equals to
- Bugscope Team as Cate says, much more
- Teacher can you tell us more about this
- Bugscope Team this is pretty cool
- Bugscope Team these are the little sitcky 'hairs' that help some insects stick to vertical walls or ceilings
- Bugscope Team sticky
- Teacher so is this what spiderman crawls with
Bugscope Team exactly
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down here you can see where you are
- Bugscope Team you can see where these are found on the tarsus
- Bugscope Team in the first movie, you see how he grows little hairs in his fingers and then he crawls up a wall, that is the same principle
- Teacher why do snails die when you pour salt on them
- Bugscope Team the tarsi are the segments of the arm or leg closest to the claw
- Bugscope Team I imagine that the salts cause the snail to lose liquid -- to lose water that they are made of
- Teacher tell us more about this picture
- Bugscope Team it has the effect of drying the snail out very rapidly
- Teacher what are the bubbles in his mouth
- 10:09am
- Bugscope Team this is the tip of a palp of a beetle
- Teacher what is a palp
- Bugscope Team palps let the beetle taste its food
- Bugscope Team the palps are like little feelers that help the beetle taste and manipulate its food
- Bugscope Team the bubblelike things are taste buds
- Teacher is there any food on the beetle
- Bugscope Team that let the beetle smell its prospective food
- Bugscope Team could be if you take the mag down to see
- Teacher what does its nose look like
- Teacher what are grass beetles
- Bugscope Team these are not stored images -- you are actually driving a scanning electron microscope
- Bugscope Team Insects smell with their antennae and they breathe through holes on their thorax and abdomen
- Bugscope Team so you can take the mag down by clicking minus in the Magnify box.
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Bugscope Team They have two different body parts to do what our nose does.
- Bugscope Team when you click to drive remember to click to stop
- Bugscope Team and you can take the mag lower to see where you are
- Bugscope Team teacher, if you get lost, you can always click on a preset and the scope will move to that location
- Bugscope Team this is pretty high mag now
- Bugscope Team hey cool
- Bugscope Team this is the claw of a true bug
- Bugscope Team true bugs are a particular kind of insect
- Teacher what bug is tit
Bugscope Team this is some sort of true bug
- Teacher it
- Bugscope Team that has, for example, piercing mouthparts
- 10:14am
- Bugscope Team if you take the magnification down you should be able to see its body
- Teacher how hard does it pinch
Bugscope Team True bugs have sucking mouthparts, so they can't pinch when they bite. When true bugs bite, they stick you
- Bugscope Team hemiptera
- Bugscope Team it means 'half wing' and indicates (Annie can correct me) that the wings are partially covered by the elytra -- the shell that some insects have covering their wings
- Bugscope Team you are getting better and better at driving -- it is not so easy
- Bugscope Team here it is interesting to see that there seems to be a pad of tenent setae on the end of this joint
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a moth
- Bugscope Team the defining feature of true bugs is their possession of mouthparts where the mandibles and maxillae have evolved into a proboscis - (from wikipedia)
- Teacher what is this
- Teacher do moths have fur
- Bugscope Team you can see the big round eyes on either side of the bright scaled portions
- Bugscope Team moths do look furry
- Teacher what do beetles eat
Bugscope Team the lady bug eats other insects
Bugscope Team Beetles eat almost anything imaginable: pollen, wood, other insects, rotting animals, poop, fungus, plants
- Bugscope Team moths have lots of scales that make them look furry
- Bugscope Team beetles eat a variety of things
- Teacher yes we can see the eye
- Bugscope Team it depends on the beetle
- Bugscope Team there are so many beetles they can specialize in what they like to eat
- Bugscope Team some beetles eat plants only, others eat animals and plants... it varies on the specific species
- 10:19am
- Bugscope Team here you can see the proboscis coiled up in the center of the head
- Bugscope Team and you can see that the eyes are very round
- Teacher why do they have the hair
Bugscope Team the hairs are called "setae", and they help the insect to sense it's environment. the setae are connected to nerves underneath the exoskeleton.
- Teacher is it hare
- Teacher hair
- Bugscope Team the hair helps them, for example, keep from getting stuck in spider webs
- Bugscope Team setae is pronounced 'sea-tea'
- Bugscope Team but in this case what looks like hair is mostly scales, which are sort of like feathers
- Teacher is that a spot or a hole on the wing
- Bugscope Team moths and mosquitoes and a few other insects have scales
- Bugscope Team now you can see that this moth was once in someone's collection
- Bugscope Team it is a hole in the thorax
- Bugscope Team remember insects have a hard exoskeleton around them. Think of it as a suit of armor. You won't be able to feel anything through that armor easily. So insects have "hairs" poking through that are connected to nerves to allow them to feel, taste, smell what's going on
- Bugscope Team hwere there was once a pin
- Bugscope Team where
- Teacher why are insects in the world
- Bugscope Team When we make insect collections, we pin the insects throught their thorax to display them
- Teacher tell more about this picture
Bugscope Team We are looking at a close up of a moths wing. You can see the overlapping scales
- 10:24am
- Bugscope Team insects can be very helpful and also can cause problems -- much like people
- Bugscope Team this is a portion of a wing
- Bugscope Team it shows a number of the wing scales
- Teacher a wing of what
- Bugscope Team a moth
- Bugscope Team the pattern of the scales can reflect light so that we see colors
- Bugscope Team different colors
- Bugscope Team scales on a moth or butterfly are very similar to the feathers of a bird
- Bugscope Team and speaking of colors...
- Teacher what are moths useful for
Bugscope Team Moths pollinate some plants, especially in the tropics. They are also very important food for birds and bats
- Bugscope Team Insects are very important, they pollinate plants, they get rid of dead things and rotting vegetation, they are food for birds, lizards, frogs and mammals, and they produce a number of important products, like honey and wax and a number of dyes.
- Bugscope Team the reason our images are in black and white is because we are using electrons rather than light to collect the images we see
- Bugscope Team electrons are very small -- smaller than visible light
- Bugscope Team insects are part of the food chain
- Bugscope Team some moths are farmed for their silk, the silkworm moth is farm for the silk that it uses to build its cocoon
- Bugscope Team so some of the things we like to eat would not survive if down the line there were now insects
- Bugscope Team no insects would mean no fish, for example
- Teacher how many eye's do they have
Bugscope Team this is a fruit fly, so they have 2 compound eyes and 3 smaller simple eyes called ocelli
- Bugscope Team without insects, a lot of pollination for plants wouldn't happen
- Bugscope Team the fruit fly will have hundreds to thousands of ommatidia -- the facets of the compound eye
- 10:29am
- Bugscope Team this fruit fly has two large compound eyes, each one with hundreds of facets, called ommatidia, each one with its own lens
- Bugscope Team a fly has a highly developed sense of sight, which is why they can be so pesky!
- Teacher what is the hair coming off
- Teacher can a fly close thier eyes
- Bugscope Team the hairs (setae) are coming off of the eye
- Bugscope Team they cannot close their eyes
- Bugscope Team and their eyes can get dirty, as we see here
- Bugscope Team some of them have fallen off, but the setae are inbetween the ommatidia
- Teacher do insects sleep
- Bugscope Team the setae come out from between the ommatidia, uh, as Cate says
- Bugscope Team they don't sleep like we do
- Teacher what are the particals on his eye
Bugscope Team it's mostly dirt or something like that, we like to call it ju-ju
- Bugscope Team these hairs allow them to sense wind movement easily, like if a flyswatter or a hand were coming at them, they wouldnt feel the wind first and fly away before they get hit
- Bugscope Team some of the things on the eye are setae
- Bugscope Team and some are dirt
- Bugscope Team sometimes we see bacteria on the surface of the eye
- Bugscope Team oh, yes, but the sticks laying across the eye are broken setae
- Teacher why do spiders have eight legs
- Teacher how old do insects get before they die
Bugscope Team most of them are one year old, but some insects, like honeybee queens can live many years
- Bugscope Team I think the way spiders move it is very handy to have eight legs
- 10:34am
- Teacher tell me more about what we are looking at
Bugscope Team this is a haltere (the boxing glove) which beats opposite the wing to stabilize it during flight
- Bugscope Team this is the body of a fruit fly
- Teacher how do insects get thier color
- Teacher can insects have freckels
- Bugscope Team and we can see a hole in the side which in this case is supposed to be there -- it is a spiracle
- Bugscope Team insects do not have freckles like we do because they do not have skin like we do
- Bugscope Team insects have an exoskeleton; as Cate said they their skeleton on the outside of their bodies like armor
- Teacher tell me more about what they use to breath
Bugscope Team the spiracles can be found on many insects bodies. they are connected to the respiratory system
- Bugscope Team they breathe through the spiracles, which they can open as close as they wish
- Bugscope Team there are I think two spiracles on each body segment, usually on each side
- 10:39am
- Bugscope Team oh this is cool
- Bugscope Team this is a mite on the body of a ladybug
- Teacher what is a mite
- Bugscope Team but it was not attached to the ladybug
- Bugscope Team in some sharks and rays, however, spiracles are found behind the eyes, and those spiracles pump water to the gills while the animal is at rest
- Bugscope Team a mite is a very small arthropod that is often a parasite of some sort on a larger creature
- Teacher why are some spiders not posinous
Bugscope Team well, most spiders can inject venom, and can kill its prey that way. but most of those venoms are not poisonous to humans
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down a bit you can see where it is
- Bugscope Team All spiders have venom but some are more choosey about when they use it
- Bugscope Team this is the 'chin' area of a ladybug if a ladybug had a chin
- Teacher what do mites eat
- Teacher can you tell how old a lady bug is by the spots they have
Bugscope Team Nope, the number of spots on a ladybug only tells you what kind of ladybug it is. Insects don't change at all after they molt to adult form
- Bugscope Team They eat a variety of things like fungus, flakes of skin...
- Bugscope Team And many time the venom of spiders is not harmful to humans. A human is way too big for any spider to eat
Bugscope Team good thing for that too!!!!
- Bugscope Team the spots do not change on a ladybug -- it is an adult and will not change its spots
- 10:44am
- Teacher what is the thing stiking out of the mites mouth
Bugscope Team I think that IS its mouth!
- Bugscope Team now you can see where the mite is in relation to the ladybug's head
- Bugscope Team the things sticking out of the front of the mite are its limbs
- Bugscope Team and limbs ;)
- Teacher what are wee looking at now
- Bugscope Team pretty gnarly looking mouth, huh?
- Bugscope Team Annie is right, actually, since the mite feeds through its limbs
- Teacher is this the mouth of the mite
- Bugscope Team this is the head of the lady bug
- Bugscope Team the 2 vacuum nozzle looking things are a set of its palps
- Bugscope Team yeah Cool
- Bugscope Team see how small the mite is? ladybugs are small, to us, and the mite is really quite tiny
- Bugscope Team you can see the eyes on either side of the head, on top, and you can see one antenna, on the left
- Bugscope Team and as Cate says you can see the palps that we think resemble vacuum cleaner nozzles
- Teacher how are lady bugs born
Bugscope Team Larvae hatch from eggs..the larvae eat and eat and grow and grow, then they pupate into adults
- 10:50am
- Bugscope Team the life cycle of the ladybug is only 4-7 weeks :(
- Teacher why does the black widow spider have an hour glass on its bellie
- Teacher what are the insects siting on
- Bugscope Team The hourglass is red and likely signifies that the spider is dangerous. It keeps other critters from messing with it.
- Bugscope Team often insects/arthropods that are brightly colored and call attention to themselves are warning us that they are dangerous to touch or to eat
- Bugscope Team yes, a brightly colored clear marking on any animal can serve as a warning to predators: stay away or i['ll mess up up man!
- Bugscope Team the insects are on silver paint and carbon doublestick tape
- Bugscope Team they are also coated with a few nanometers of the alloy gold-palladium
- 10:55am
- Bugscope Team we cannot see the gold-palladium at these magnifications
- Bugscope Team the metal coating makes the insects conductive
- Bugscope Team so that the electrons that impinge on them do not sink in and give us poor images
- Bugscope Team this is so pretty
- Teacher what is the spiders web made out of
- Bugscope Team protein!
- Bugscope Team these are tiny hairs but modified so that they can stick to surfaces
- Bugscope Team when a spider is done with its web, it can eat it and make it again, kind of like recycling
- Bugscope Team the spider can produce web that is sticky, or not sticky
- Bugscope Team and if it gets stuck in its own web it can eat its way out
- Bugscope Team spiders inject venom into their prey, and the venom makes the inside of the prey turn to a liquid that the spider can suck out of the body
- Teacher what are the little dots on the sticky hair
- Bugscope Team spiders think of their prey the way we think of milkshakes
- Bugscope Team we don't know what the dots do but it may be that they prevent the hairs from sticking too well
- Bugscope Team the tenent setae need to stick and then pull loose, repeatedly
- 11:01am
- Bugscope Team i wonder if some spiders are lactose intolerant though...?
- Teacher are spiders picky eaters or do the eat whatever flys into their web
- Bugscope Team they don't like the taste of some things, like Monarch butterflies, and they will cut loose what they do not want to eat
- Bugscope Team spiders can also sense when poison has entered one of their legs, for example, from something else biting them.
- Bugscope Team they can pop off a leg, if they need to, to get away
- Bugscope Team when they sense a poison entering the leg, they can just let go of the leg
- Bugscope Team in 1973, skylab took two spiders into space to test their web spinning capability in zero-gravity
- Bugscope Team Sorry that I have to leave early everyone. Thank you for your good questions!!!
- Bugscope Team but the rest of us are still here teacher!
- Bugscope Team bye bye!
- Teacher bye bye annuie that you
- Teacher annie
- Teacher thank you
- Bugscope Team Annie is our entomologist.
- Bugscope Team yes, she is an expert in beetles, and other insects as well
- Teacher what does that mean
- Bugscope Team She is a graduate student in entomology -- which is the study of insects
- Bugscope Team she is our bugologist
- 11:06am
- Bugscope Team she studies, in particular, beetles that are called cerambycids -- longhorned beetles
- Bugscope Team the 'horns' are their antennae
- Bugscope Team etymology, which is the study of what words mean, is helpful in entomology
- Teacher we really enjoyed this time of looking at bugs. Thank you for all your help, We learned alot and it will make us want ot study more about bugs and jobs like yours
- Bugscope Team thank you for all your great questions
- Bugscope Team THANK YOU!
- Bugscope Team this is fun for us and we hope you will come back again
- Bugscope Team thank you Kristin Snyder, you did a GREAT JOB!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-013
- Bugscope Team ah yes, all the chat and images from this session are saved to your member page, the link is below
- Bugscope Team that way you can review all the questions and images that you took, and study them later with your class
- 11:11am
- Bugscope Team over and out! Thank You again!
- 11:17am
- Bugscope Team session locked, disabled, rxl stopped
- Bugscope Team mrs. snyder, i'm going to have to log you out now. great session though!
- Bugscope Team please send us feedback: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/feedback
- Bugscope Team and don't forget your member page: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-013
- Bugscope Team okay, time to go, bye!
