Connected on 2008-10-06 14:30:00 from Milwaukee, WI, US
- 1:33pm
- Bugscope Team 1.9
- 1:39pm
- 1:46pm
- 1:53pm
- 1:58pm
- 2:05pm
- Bugscope Team the big eye
- 2:10pm
- 2:15pm
- 2:23pm
- Bugscope Team Claudi!
- Bugscope Team Smiley on board...
- 2:28pm
- Bugscope Team Hello Michele!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Teacher HI there - we will start in about 5-7 minutes - i have to introduce you all!
- Bugscope Team all right we can't wait!
- Bugscope Team Smiley is logging in to help from Florida.
- 2:39pm
- Teacher Are we ready to go?
- Bugscope Team yeah you bet
- Bugscope Team rea
- Bugscope Team dy
- Bugscope Team to roll
- Bugscope Team skeeter head
- Bugscope Team this last batch of mosquitos has been really good
- Bugscope Team wow, this is the best mosquito head we've ever had!
- Bugscope Team the mouthparts are dried out and splayed open so we can see the stylets
- Bugscope Team it looks picture perfect...
- Bugscope Team one per skeeter of course
- Bugscope Team Hi Annie!
- Teacher CAn the mosquito see multiple image with all the lenses?
- Bugscope Team was this collected before or after it sucked blood from your arm? =) lol
- Bugscope Team Annie is our entomologist
- Bugscope Team Yes, she was in the process of biting me when I collected her into the ethanol
- Bugscope Team ha HAH
- Bugscope Team they probably see a large single image
- Bugscope Team really????
- Bugscope Team so directly into ethanol is the best to preserve the bugs???
Bugscope Team well, for some things
- Teacher Cool!
- Bugscope Team much of the brain on some of these guys, like fruit flies, is devoted to processing images
- Bugscope Team I had the kids collect their bugs into plastic containters and then I froze them
- Bugscope Team you can see now, at lower mag, that the mouthparts are 'all tore up.'
- Bugscope Team the thing curling around over the righthand (left) antenna is the part with the stylet
- Bugscope Team mosquitoes, butterflies, moths, skippers, and silverfish have scales
- Teacher Hwy is it hairy?
- Bugscope Team also one or two other odd insects
- 2:45pm
- Bugscope Team the hairs are often sensory
- Bugscope Team some are mechanosensory and some are chemosensory
- Bugscope Team the hairs function like nerve endings in the skin do for us
- Teacher hi its the students now!
- Bugscope Team if you were an insect it would be like you were wearing armor all of the time, with the skeleton on the outside
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Bugscope Team you are controlling a $600,000 microscope
- Bugscope Team so you would have lots of setae sticking through the cuticle/chitin to help you sense the world around you
- Bugscope Team Hello everyone
- Bugscope Team yeah you are doing the driving
- Bugscope Team if you break it, we'll bill you. Just kidding! :)
- Teacher hahaah
- Bugscope Team we have it set up so it is hard to break remotely
- Teacher what is the circle thing in the middle of the head
- Bugscope Team this is the underside of an ant's head
- Bugscope Team so this is the mouth
- Bugscope Team this is the view of the mouth from the bottom
- Bugscope Team ant mouths are confusing
- Bugscope Team lots of little palps
- Bugscope Team and the circle area to the right is one of its compound eyes
- Teacher why are they confusing
- Bugscope Team and now you can see the jaws
- Bugscope Team it always looks like they have another, smaller, insect in their mouth
- Bugscope Team the compound eye looks useful
- Bugscope Team sometimes they will have only 10 or 12 facets (ommatidia)
- Teacher oo thats cool. Do ants eat other bugs?
Bugscope Team They will eat other insects. It depends upon the species. Some ants eat seeds, some eat fungus, some eat garbage and rotting animals, or other insects. THere are lots of ants!
- Bugscope Team yes they do
- Bugscope Team they eat lots of stuff but are often partial to sweets
- 2:50pm
- Bugscope Team many insects have evolved defenses particularly oriented toward repelling ants
- Bugscope Team some aphids have wax that exudes from their cornicles as a liquid and instantly hardens, engulfing an ant that might be bothering them
- Bugscope Team the cornicles are little tubes like tiny jet exhausts on the back 'corners' of the aphid
- Bugscope Team this is a fly head view from the side
- Bugscope Team and we are zoomed in on the antennae]
- Bugscope Team the antennae look pretty good
- Bugscope Team this is prob'ly a female
- Teacher How do you know that it's a female?
- Bugscope Team only certain aphids have that kind of defense -- others, as Annie said, have honeydew
- Teacher We also have another question, why woudl you want to become a "bug person"?
Bugscope Team I wanted to study insects because they are (probably) the most dominant group of animals on the planet. They are so important to our health, our agriculture, and to our environment....there is so much to know, more than we will ever know. As an entomologist, I get to work outdoors and in the lab. I get to travel. I get to meet interesting people, who are really passionate about their work. Why would you NOT want to become a bug person?!!
- Teacher or a bug expert?
- Bugscope Team with some flies the males' eyes are close together and those of the females are far apart
- 2:55pm
- Teacher neat!
- Teacher nice butt
- Bugscope Team insects are infinitely interesting
- Teacher what is this image all about??
- Bugscope Team this is the fly booty, as you said
- Guest Really
- Bugscope Team and it is very dirty
- Guest this ssucks
- Guest f
- Guest f
- Bugscope Team this guy spent a lot of time on the floor I guess
- Bugscope Team puggy we can boot you off please be good
- Guest sorry that was my little brother being not so smart
- Guest what is this now
- Teacher We think bug people are totally interesting, thanks for the answer!
- Bugscope Team thanks for logging in puggy -- we're running a bugscope session with Marquette U. and this is the tip of the abdomen of a fly
- Bugscope Team Ha hah, you are welcome
- Teacher What are the holes for?
Bugscope Team to make it light weight
- Bugscope Team this is cool -- this is the surface of a single scale from a silvery moth
- 3:00pm
- Bugscope Team this is a close up of a moth scale
- Bugscope Team they almost always have holes in them, and sometimes you can see pigment granules there
- Bugscope Team the pattern and spacing we see at high mag can result in structural color formation
- Teacher Very interesting
- Bugscope Team you can have not only the true color of the scale, and that portion of the wing, but also the reflected light color of the wing/scale
- Teacher Does every moth have different patterns? LIke a snowflake....
Bugscope Team The development of scales and color patterns on scales are both genetically controlled. There are variation in patterns among individuals. I don't think every one is unique, but they certainly could be. It would be really hard to study.
- Bugscope Team I think every type of scale is specific to the insect and to the color we see
- Bugscope Team scales are sort of analogous to feathers
- Bugscope Team and they are good for passive defense as well
- Teacher Why are some parts smooth and others jagged looking?
Bugscope Team that smooth part is where scott coated the edge of the wing with silver paint and the jagged part is the part that isn't painted
- Bugscope Team you mean at the tip of the scale?
- Teacher Would the microscope break if we zoomed out again? Or would it not allow us to...
- Bugscope Team good question ; )
- Bugscope Team (about the scale shape)
- Bugscope Team it won't break
- Bugscope Team or do you mean individual scales lol
- 3:05pm
- Bugscope Team one of the problems with this type of microscope is that we cannot go to low mag
- Bugscope Team 37x is about as low as we get with this 'scope at this working distance
- Teacher good to know
- Bugscope Team actually we would get better resolution if we were closer to the sample -- if the pole piece was closer to the sample -- but we would not be able to go as low as even 37x
- Bugscope Team the mite on an earwig and a possible mold spore
- Bugscope Team Cate found this mite/pollen grain on the earwig you sent
- Teacher So this is a bug on a bug?
- Bugscope Team exactly
- Bugscope Team yes a bug on a bug
Bugscope Team A MITE on an earwig--neither are true bugs. The word "bug" should only be used to refer to insects in the families Hemiptera and/or Homoptera.
- Bugscope Team thats so awesome
- Teacher Cooooooooooooool
- Teacher What part of the earwig is that?
- Bugscope Team you can see that it's about 1/5 of a mm long
- Bugscope Team it's one of the limbs I think
- Bugscope Team you can take the mag down lower and see
- Bugscope Team A mite is an arachnid, in fact.
- Bugscope Team Annie keeps us straight. She won't let us tell kids that lobsters are huge bugs.
- Teacher Coooool
- Bugscope Team Lobsters are very large bugs with double sets of antennae.
- 3:10pm
- Teacher student A: delicious bugs
- Bugscope Team delicious with butter bugs heh
- Bugscope Team We got a huge millipede a month or so ago, as big as a baby snake. And we wondered why someone would want to use a microscope to look at it. But it turned out to have lots of mites. Just not good to touch -- made me itchy.
- Teacher What does this do?
- Bugscope Team spiracle
- Bugscope Team we had been using sections of it for sessions, but today for an earlier session is when we used the last bit
- Bugscope Team this is what insects use to breathe through
- Teacher interesting
- Teacher How does it work?
- Bugscope Team they can close them down and hold their breath
- Bugscope Team there are usually I think two spiracles on each body segment, on either side
- Teacher How many spiracles do they have on their bodies?
Bugscope Team I think it depends on the insect, but in the general sense, there is usually one per thoracic and abdominal segment---so between 13 and 15, I guess
- Teacher We thought there would be more...interesting
- Bugscope Team because they have a sort of primitive way of breathing we are lucky -- otherwise, or when they get that worked out, they could be much bigger
- 3:15pm
- Bugscope Team There is some variation between how many abdominal segments some insects have,
- Bugscope Team this preset moved a little since we made it
- Bugscope Team when you click on a preset the microscope is taking you to the place we saved, but the sample may have moved a little
- Teacher how do we adjust this preset?
- Bugscope Team take the mag down slightly
- Bugscope Team and you can prob'ly see about where we were when we made th preset
- Bugscope Team here you can also see that the electron beam burned a rectangle onto the lacewing's eye
- Teacher What is a brochosome?
Bugscope Team something only leafhoppers produce
- Bugscope Team this lacewing was hanging around with leafhoppers, which are the only insects that produce brochosomes
- Bugscope Team brochosomes are little waxy soccerball-like pellets
- Bugscope Team try over to the right now
- Bugscope Team in this area
- Teacher What do they do?
- Bugscope Team you are driving very well
- Teacher thank you
- Bugscope Team they may help keep eggs from desiccating
- 3:21pm
- Bugscope Team I am not sure if anyone knows for sure. The leafhoppers have an 'anointing' behavior in which they spread brochosomes on their bodies.
- Teacher How did they get on the eye?
- Bugscope Team this lacewing was fraternizing with leafhoppers
- Bugscope Team nice
- Bugscope Team they are like little geodesic balls
- Bugscope Team sometimes they are not round - they are oval
- Bugscope Team we find them on ladybugs sometimes
- Bugscope Team I think the general consensus is that they powder their eggs with the brochosomes. Not all leafhoppers produce them, you know. The Malpighian tubules of the leafhopper actually produce the brochosomes....Malpighian tubules are like kidneys, so I guess brochosomes are kind of like kidney stones.
- Bugscope Team not strictly 'bugs,' as Annie would tell us.
- Teacher What exactly is this preset looking at?
- Bugscope Team that is a pretty nice earwig you sent
- Teacher what is the tarsus
- Bugscope Team oh it was the tenent setae on a portion of the tarsus
- Bugscope Team the tarsi are the 'forearm' segments of a limb
- Bugscope Team individual tarsi are called tarsomeres
- Bugscope Team and the thing with all of the tenent setae on it is called a pulvillus
- Teacher why r sum so long and others so short?
- 3:26pm
- Bugscope Team You can call leafhoppers bugs--they are Homopterans. I think current taxonomy groups homopterans and hemipterans into one order: the Heteroptera
- Teacher gotcha
- Bugscope Team sometimes they appear (the setae) to have suction cups on the ends
- Bugscope Team and sometimes you get the idea that the setae work more like Velcro
- Teacher Are they really ant "paws"?
- Bugscope Team this is an ant claw
- Bugscope Team we knew we would be working with people who would not let us get away with calling them 'paws'
- Bugscope Team you can see here, mostly, how the cuticle of the ant body is sculpted
- Teacher Ok all - this is Michele again - my students had a blast and say THANK YOU!! We have to sign off :)
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team thanks for all your questions. see you next semester!
- Teacher GO BuG people!!
- Bugscope Team Thank you all!!!
- Bugscope Team we had a good time as well, getting Annie stirred up
- 3:32pm
- Bugscope Team he should be here around the 20th
- Bugscope Team thanks Smiley
- Bugscope Team Thanks Annie!
- Bugscope Team bye bye!!!!!
- Bugscope Team over and out! Bye!
- Bugscope Team Bye guys.
- Bugscope Team Bye Smiley.
