Session 2008-048 with Olive Hill Adult Learning Center and Library

Application

The School

The Class

The Project

Miscellaneous

Live Session Transcript

Connected on 2008-07-25 09:00:00 from Olive Hill, KY, US

• 8:17am
• Bugscope Team gud
• 8:24am
• Bugscope Team 1.8
• 8:40am

• Bugscope Team Hello! Welcome to Bugscope!

• Bugscope Team We are working on the presets.
• 8:46am
• Bugscope Team You're getting a preview...

• Teacher yes
• Bugscope Team When we do presets we have another window open and might be slow to answer. But things are moving along.

• Bugscope Team As soon as the presets are done we will unlock the session and you will be able to drive
• Teacher ok
• 8:52am

• 8:57am
• Bugscope Team we got a slow start this morning because one of the samples was kind of juicy and took awhile to pump down -- everything is in a vacuum here

• Bugscope Team alright! we are done setting up and have unlocked the 'scope
• Bugscope Team please feel free to drvie, try things out, look around, ask questions...
• Bugscope Team that would be 'drive'

• Bugscope Team there are ocelli seen here
• Bugscope Team which are simple eyes
• Bugscope Team (the ocelli are the bumps in the corner)
• Teacher thank you
• Bugscope Team there are three ocelli, singular ocellus
• Bugscope Team they help the flying insect, in this case a fruit fly, navigate
• 9:02am
• Bugscope Team the compound eyes -- we see one to the right here -- have hundreds of facets called ommatidia
• Bugscope Team sometimes we will see a compound eye that has cracked open, and in some of those cases we see that the inside of the eye appears to be crystalline; those are really individual lenses
• Bugscope Team let us know if you need help driving or if you are having any trouble
• Teacher okay we are starting now
• Bugscope Team great!
• Bugscope Team you can choose from among the presets, but you can also drive wherever you would like
• Bugscope Team you are controlling a scanning electron microscope. it puts a finely focussed beam of electrons across the sample, wherever you choose to look, and the beam travels repeatedly across the area we see
• 9:08am
• Bugscope Team the electron beam 'scans' across the sample and makes what are then called secondary electrons come from the surface

• Bugscope Team they are captured using a secondary electron detector (surprise?), and the signal from that detector is what we are looking at
• Bugscope Team this is a fruit fly haltere
• Teacher leg?
• Bugscope Team there may also be a leg in the image
• Bugscope Team above the haltere
• Bugscope Team it is an evolved set of wings which beat opposite the pair of wings of the fly
• Bugscope Team A haltere is a reduced hind wing
• Bugscope Team doh!
• Bugscope Team the haltere is a modified, over eons, hindwing
• Bugscope Team giving stability acting as a gyroscope
• Bugscope Team as Cate and Annie said

• Bugscope Team usually we see the spiracle next to the haltere very clearly, but this one was occluded for some reason
• Bugscope Team this is kind of an old fruit fly we had

• Bugscope Team this is an odd-looking claw on a strange little hopper like insect I found at my house
• 9:13am
• Teacher in the grasshopper family?

• Bugscope Team cute little guy

• Bugscope Team this is one of our favorite things to find
• Bugscope Team some mites here on the earwig
• Bugscope Team a tiny colony of mites on the body of the earwig
• Bugscope Team mites can usually be found on earwigs (pincer bugs)

• Bugscope Team leafhoppers are Cicadellidae, and grasshoppers are Orthoptera

• Bugscope Team the mites are blind, and they stay with the earwig

• Bugscope Team sometimes we see them on Annie's kind of insects -- the longhorned beetles

• 9:19am
• Teacher do they eat from the host ?
• Bugscope Team No one really knows what the mites do. They do not seem to harm the host insect. Most entomologists think that the mites feed on dirt and oils on the hosts body...so in a way they may actually benefit the host.
• Bugscope Team the head is tucked in where we can't see it

• Bugscope Team this is the claw from a shriveled baby praying mantis

• Bugscope Team there is another mantis on the stub that looks better

• Bugscope Team sad, huh

• Bugscope Team here if you try click to center you could move to the left, if you want
• Bugscope Team the samples we are imaging are coated with several nanometers of gold-palladium to make them conductive
• Teacher how long will we have access to the site?
  Bugscope Team you will be able to get to your session page anytime you want, as scot says-- "forever"
• 9:25am
• Bugscope Team the images you collect and the chat will be up 'forever'
• Bugscope Team it should be available forever on the web
• Bugscope Team your session page is at: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-048/
• Teacher we are only in 20 min sessions and want to have access later, thank you so much they have loved it!!
• Teacher can we stay on and look more to have more info saved?
• Bugscope Team Oh... Yes please stay on and collect images.
• Bugscope Team we have 'til 11 your time

• Bugscope Team that is a much better looking head
• Teacher awesome!
• 9:31am

• Teacher is this the mouth?
• Bugscope Team I think here we are at the tip of the abdomen
• Bugscope Team usually we mount critters so the head is to the north, although we didn't do that with the spider today

• Teacher That is good to know--I am going to try to use your site with my middle school students this fall!

• 9:36am

• Bugscope Team just re-apply -- now you know how to do it
• Bugscope Team easy...
• Teacher I will-this was relatively painless:)

• Teacher antennaes at the top?
• Bugscope Team longhorned beetle!!!
• Bugscope Team yay
• Teacher used to sense things??
• Bugscope Team attenuated antennae in this case
• 9:41am
• Teacher which means...
• Bugscope Team they were so long Cate had to cut them shorter
• Bugscope Team to fit on the stub
• Bugscope Team she left a full antenna next to the beetle, to the right

• Bugscope Team a lot of insects seem to use their antennae at least as much as their eyes to gather information from their surroundings

• Bugscope Team some ants don't even bother to have eyes

• Teacher Cool
• Bugscope Team Longhorned beetles are so named because they have extremely long antenna proportional to their bodies. They use their antenna to sense sound, to smell, to taste--and to fight and push with.
• Bugscope Team and some of the ants that do have eyes are nearly blind

• Bugscope Team One longhorned beetle can sting with its antennae
• Bugscope Team Annie is this a typical Cerambycid head? Like do you recognize it right away?

• Bugscope Team yup

• Bugscope Team they have been finding Emerald Ash Borers down around here now
• Bugscope Team Really?!
• Bugscope Team That is bad.
• Bugscope Team yeah they are closing in on us
• Teacher what is the average life span of insects or do they vary greatly?
  Bugscope Team the lifespan of insects varies greatly. it can be anywhere from a day to a year or two
• Bugscope Team I will catch as many as I can for bugscope
• Bugscope Team we could say that it varies
• Bugscope Team often one season is average?
• 9:47am
• Bugscope Team i think 1 season is average
• Teacher do you have any samples of a cicada? The kids would really be interested in that
• Bugscope Team Some insects will live one year (season), some insects have multiple generations in a single season, some insects live for many many years, such as periodical cicadas

• Bugscope Team we rarely look at cicadas because they are so big
• Bugscope Team the stub the samples are mounted on is 1.75 inches in diameter
• Teacher How much larger is the average cicadas compared to an average mantis
• Bugscope Team but sometimes we get small cicadas, or we will look only at parts of them
• 9:52am
• Bugscope Team The best specimens for Bugscope are small insects and arthropods. With a larger specimen, like a cicada or a full grown mantis you can really only see a parts---which is cool, but seems to be hard to understand when taken out of context
• Bugscope Team it seems like an average cicada is at least 1.5 inches long, but wide; and an adult mantis will be much longer but less wide, of course
• Bugscope Team A full grown mantis is 3-4 inches long, depending on the species
• Bugscope Team Some are larger (full grown adult female Chinese mantises can be 5-6 inches long)
• Bugscope Team whoa
• Bugscope Team when I was in Okinawa we had them perched on the side of the house all of the time, and they would watch you as you walked in the door
• Teacher creepy
• Bugscope Team they would tily their heads like inquisitive dogs do sometimes
• Bugscope Team yeah they have those little pinpoints in their eyes
• Bugscope Team tilt
• Bugscope Team look like little aliens
• Bugscope Team their heads
• Bugscope Team My friend swore that she was being stalked by a mantis once...this is a friend that is terrified of insects
• Bugscope Team when they can fly as well it can be frightening
• Teacher are any of you afraid of insects?
• Bugscope Team I like them better this way...
• Bugscope Team I guess I am afraid of millipedes
• Bugscope Team i'm ok as long as they are dead...
• Bugscope Team after you do this for awhile you get used to them -- you know what they look like up close
• Bugscope Team I am not afraid of insects...I don't like the ones that sting or bite or give me a rash, but I wouldn't say I am afraid of them.
• 9:57am
• Bugscope Team I wish we had a horsefly so we could show you their slashing mouthparts
• Bugscope Team I don't like to pick up the ones that have been running around in rotten meat or dung
• Teacher do you guys have any advice for searching for poisonous bugs
• Bugscope Team I am afraid of millipedes even after they are dead...
• Bugscope Team Annie might.
• Bugscope Team Scott, I will see if I can get a horse fly for you all...they come to me
• Bugscope Team the thing about black widow spiders, for example, is that they seem to be territorial, and they will stay in one place in your house, like under the fridge
• Bugscope Team Well, there are not very many bugs that are overly poisonous. There are caterpillars that have stinging hairs and beetles that will spray a burning chemical on you. And then there are stinging insects like wasps and bees.
• Bugscope Team a lot of insects have defenses not against people in particular but against ants
• Bugscope Team There are many insects that would be poisonous to you if you ate a bunch of them, like monarch butterflies and ladybugs....but you wouldn't want to eat them any way.
• Teacher is eating other insects like chocolate covered ants (it happens) actually dangerous
  Bugscope Team I think you could probably eat lots of ants and not get sick.
• Bugscope Team Except in individuals with several allergies, most insect stings or bites hurt for a while, but they won't cause death.
• Bugscope Team some aphids have a sticky sap-like exudate that hardens after it gets into the air, and it will harden onto an ant, for example
• Bugscope Team good protein
• 10:03am
• Bugscope Team Even if you ate a bunch of poisonous insects you would just throw up, not die.
• Bugscope Team we see bacteria on insects but usually it does not proliferate until after they die
• Bugscope Team horned toads have a formic acid requirement in their diets and need to eat ants
• Bugscope Team The Chumash Indians used to flavor their food with dried ants.
• Bugscope Team Marti do you want to drive around a little more?
• Teacher no thank you the kids loved it
• Bugscope Team Great!