Connected on 2008-09-18 08:30:00 from , IL, US
- 8:17am
- Bugscope Team having a problem getting to vacuum so we are trying to find the culprit- some juicy bug
- 8:22am
- Bugscope Team 4.1
- Bugscope Team 3.8
- Bugscope Team 3.5
- Bugscope Team 3.0
- Bugscope Team 2.8
- Bugscope Team 2.7
- Bugscope Team 2.5
- Bugscope Team 2.2
- Bugscope Team 2.1
- Bugscope Team 2.0
- Bugscope Team 1.9
- Bugscope Team 1.8
- Bugscope Team 1.7
- Guest hey guys
- Bugscope Team 1.6
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- Bugscope Team we are running, like, up the minute
- Bugscope Team 1.5
- Bugscope Team going for 1.3 and then we make presets
- Bugscope Team we got a super juicy mantis head and had to figure it out
- Guest what kind of mantis is it?
- Bugscope Team a big praying mantis,but we had to take it out
- 8:27am
- Bugscope Team Hello Ms Clark!
- 8:32am
- Teacher good morning. the class should be here and ready at 8:40
- Bugscope Team Almost ready we had a super juicy bug we had to find and remove
- Bugscope Team Cate is making us some quick presets.
- Teacher Thank you for being flexiblle today...we will probably be with you guys for 20-30 minutes then have regular class to review for 10 min....quiz tomorrow!!!
- Teacher The presets look great so far!
- Bugscope Team All Cate
- Teacher Did you set them according to the hours? Or student names?
- Teacher It has been a year since we have done this....do we center first, then magnify?
- Bugscope Team Sorry we are buzzing....
- Bugscope Team you should just be able to click on the preset and then take the mag down in most cases
- Bugscope Team then you can look around, click to center if you want
- 8:38am
- Bugscope Team just got to the cool antennae
- Bugscope Team Alright Ms Clark you are good to go
- Teacher hi! we are here....
- Bugscope Team Cate is putting the kids' names on the presets that go with their contributions
- Bugscope Team so you may choose from among the presets or jsut start driving, changing mag, ...
- 8:43am
- Bugscope Team We did have the praying mantis head on here but it was too juicy still
- Bugscope Team we were not able to use all of the samples because the sample stage is only 50 mm in diameter
- Teacher yucky!
- Bugscope Team this is the polyphemus moth, and we see scales, mostly, next to the compound eye
- Teacher what are the hair like things?
Bugscope Team for this moth, the hair-like things are probably just scales
- Bugscope Team this eye did not fare well -- it got some sort of juju on it
- Bugscope Team the hairlike things surrouding the eye are narrow scales
- Teacher TOO MUCH INFO! just kidding!
- Bugscope Team surrounding, that is
- Teacher what are we looking at here?
Bugscope Team this is the compound eye of the moth, and as you can see it got some stuff on it at some point
- Bugscope Team when you rub a moth or butterfly's wings, the powder that comes off on your fingers are its scales
- Bugscope Team this is some goo that stuck to the surface of the eye and then started to dry
- Bugscope Team so it formed little casts of the eye surface
- Teacher what does this microscope look like? what's the cost/what
Bugscope Team The microscope cost around $600,000
- Teacher is the highest magnification?
- Bugscope Team the other moth has a tres better looking eye
- Bugscope Team it is about the size of a large desk
- Bugscope Team we can go to over 200,000x but that is the limit, pretty much, of publishable images
- Teacher wow!
- Bugscope Team this is cool and worth taking the mag down to see
- Bugscope Team when you get a chance
- 8:48am
- Bugscope Team the polyphemus moth had some beautiful antennae
- Bugscope Team the antennae on the big moth are so impressive
- Teacher those are fab!
- Bugscope Team you can see a few scales caught in the 'fronds'
- Bugscope Team oop
- Bugscope Team there we go the stinger
- Bugscope Team formidable
- Bugscope Team the students all had some great insects, i wish we were able to fit them all on the stub for you
- Teacher neato!
- Bugscope Team this is from the mondo bigboy cicada killer
- Teacher does the stinger stay in the person it stings or does it stay on the bee?
Bugscope Team If you are stung by a honey bee, the stinger stays in the stinger, and yes, the bee does die. Wasps can sting many times because the can withdraw their stinger
- Bugscope Team All of those little hairs are receptors that detect a pheromone that the female moth releases. Often female silk worm moths (like this species) cannot fly, so they have to attract the male to them
- Bugscope Team haha , the stinger stays in the PERSON
- Bugscope Team ha ha
- Bugscope Team you can see that this stinger may be withdrawn -- some of them have recurved spines and would not easily be taken out by the bee
- Teacher ouch!
- Bugscope Team or dog or horse--whatever the bee stings
- 8:53am
- Teacher if you touch a dead bee, could you still be stung?
Bugscope Team I have thought about this a lot, and I think the answer is no, not unless you are really trying. You would probably have to stick your finger really hard onto the stinger and the bee would have to be fresh enough that you wouldn't just smoosh it. Also, it wouldn't hurt because the bee's venom would dry up when it died.
- Teacher oh, and do they really kill cicadas?
Bugscope Team Cicada killers are actually a kind of wasp, not a bee. And yes, the female cicada killer captures and lays its eggs on a cicada.
- Bugscope Team some stings from insects hurt a lot more than others
- Bugscope Team walruses
- Teacher my name is wally!
- Bugscope Team I am not sure if they really target cicadas, but that is what they are often called
- Bugscope Team hi Wally!
- Bugscope Team there is actually a pain scale for stings. for wasps, the most painful sting comes from a tarantula hawk
Bugscope Team I have seen tarantula hawks in the desert...the kind of scare me
- Bugscope Team you can take the mag down if you want and look around
- Bugscope Team i always wondered about that annie. cool (about being stung by a dead bee)
- Bugscope Team they must have eggs that mature quickly
Bugscope Team The wasp kills or paralyzes the cicada and the larvae eat the cicada as they develop
- Teacher that's crazy talk!
- Bugscope Team Annie is our entomologist.
- Teacher that's rude! i would not want to be the cicada!
Bugscope Team it's a cruel world out there ;)
- 8:59am
- Teacher we're trying to change the preset to the wasp head, why isn't it working?
- Teacher oops, sorry for sending that twice.
Bugscope Team actually we dont always see when things are doubled. The happens to everyone when they type something every now and then. It is some small glitch
- Teacher appearantly so!
- Teacher WE GOT IT!!
- Teacher eww, looks gross. so why does the mouth look like this?
Bugscope Team it has a hinged jaw
- Bugscope Team the mouth looks like a gateway
- Teacher what do they eat?
- Bugscope Team with hinges
- Bugscope Team and again
- Teacher why isn't it let us drive and center?
- Bugscope Team now we can see the compound eye, to the left
- Bugscope Team try again
- Teacher what does the insect's vision look like?
Bugscope Team I guess the current consensus it that it is pixelated, kind of like photos in the newspaper when you look sort of close.
- Bugscope Team the insect has to process all of the images from the multiple vews it gets, and a lot of the brain is devoted to doing that
- 9:04am
- Teacher what are the spikes on the eye?
- Bugscope Team having a compound eye gives the insect the ability to assess motion very quickly
- Bugscope Team the spikes are likely mechanosensory
- Bugscope Team with the eyes' curvature, it gives insects like these almost a 360 degree view of what's around then
- Bugscope Team them
- Teacher very different from our eyesight!
- Bugscope Team yes very!
- Teacher where is this claw located on the wasp?
Bugscope Team These is one of the wasp's "feet"
- Teacher we've only got 4 minutes to save the world!
- Bugscope Team uh oh better work fast
- Teacher just kidding, it's a song.. but we do have to leave soon.
- Teacher or you better get this thing working at high speed paces!
- Teacher ;)
- Bugscope Team so the wasp sees the world like Roy Lichtenstein, in Benday dots
- Teacher whoever that is
- Teacher :)
- Teacher thank you so much! we have to leave for 2nd hour.. that's math for me.
- Teacher byee!
- 9:09am
- Teacher we will be back aroung 9:30/9:35. thanks!
- Bugscope Team ok
- Bugscope Team see you then
- Bugscope Team cool
- Bugscope Team okay brb
- 9:19am
- Bugscope Team who0
- 9:28am
- Teacher hi. i am looking for 2nd hours insects?
- Bugscope Team the praying mantis we had was one, but like we mentioned it was too juicy :(
- Bugscope Team Ms Clark we didn't have room for everything.
- Teacher that is fine, just checking....
- Teacher did the butterfly make it?:
- Bugscope Team there is not enough time to make multiple samples or that would've been an option
- Teacher no problem....
- Bugscope Team we made a preset from each of the critters that fit on the stub, so this is all we have today
- Teacher great....
- Bugscope Team so we hope your students will be happy with what we have -- we have added a couple of presets
- 9:33am
- Bugscope Team this is cool --
- Bugscope Team scales have color from pigments in those little compartments we barely see here
- Bugscope Team and they also produce structural colors from the pattern they form
- Bugscope Team the structural colors are similar to what you would see from the surface of a vinyl record, which is black but reflects other hues
- Teacher Hi we are here
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- Bugscope Team hello all!
- Bugscope Team these are scales, up close, from a painted lady butterfly
- Bugscope Team scales are a lot like feathers on a bird
- Bugscope Team if you look at the micron bar in the lower left corner of the image you can see how highly magnified this is
- Bugscope Team it's the powdery stuff that comes off butterfly and moth wings
- Bugscope Team 2 microns is the length of a normal bacterium -- a bacillus -- the rod shaped kind
- Bugscope Team so we would have no problem imaging bacteria
- 9:39am
- Bugscope Team 1 micron is 1000 nanometers
- Bugscope Team and 1 micron = 1 micrometer = 1/1000 millimeter
- Bugscope Team 1 micron = 1 millionth of a meter
- Teacher How does it kill a cicada?
Bugscope Team It kills the cicada by stinging the cicada
- Teacher does it injectr somethinginto the cicada?
Bugscope Team It injects it with venom which paralyzes/kills it. Then it lays its eggs on the cicada and when the wasp larvae hatch, they eat the cicada that their mother caught for them
- Bugscope Team eggs
- Bugscope Team many wasps are parasitic
- Teacher eggs?
- Teacher how come we cant drive and center
- Bugscope Team and they find hosts to inject eggs into, so the hosts feed what will become the larvae
- Bugscope Team you may have to refresh (F5)
- Bugscope Team see if that works
- 9:44am
- Bugscope Team I just tried it myself, and it seemed to work for me. We will have to explore this later if you are not able to drive
- Bugscope Team so we are looking very closely at the cicada killer stinger
- Bugscope Team this is one of two 'tracks' but I do not know its exact purpose
- Student we have lost the magnification and drive buttons
- Bugscope Team you should see them again
- Bugscope Team try now I just gave you control
- Student presets?
- Bugscope Team hit F5
- Bugscope Team when you became Lori I wasn't watching and control had been left with Clark
- Student thank you
- Bugscope Team sorry
- Bugscope Team the cicada killer was so big that it could have taken up the whole stub
- Student we are trying to get to the wasp head
- Student how high in power can it go?
- 9:49am
- Bugscope Team there might have been something wrong with that preset so we remade it
- Student does the female eat the male
Bugscope Team I am not aware of any cases of female wasps eating male wasps.
- Student is the mouth open
Bugscope Team the mouth is closed. It swings open and closed like a gate
- Bugscope Team it has a hinged jaw
- Student what are the hairs on the face do
Bugscope Team The small hairs, which are more appropriately called setae, are probably mechanosensory--they help the wasp sense its environment through its think exoskeleton
- Bugscope Team you can go up to around 200,000x before you won't be able to see anything interesting anymore, but it can go higher
- Bugscope Team sometimes hairs (setae) are sensory, and sometimes they have other functions
- Bugscope Team gah thick exoskeleton--can't type today!
- Bugscope Team sometimes the setae are arranged so that they form a pattern that other wasps can recognize
- Bugscope Team see how the jaw looks like a fork?
- Bugscope Team or a spork?
- 9:55am
- Bugscope Team when we look at insects this way we sometimes forget how dynamic they are when they are alive
- Bugscope Team clark2 has control now
- Student how much does a microscope like this cost
Bugscope Team when we bought it, it cost $600,000. but that was osme years ago. now it would be much more expensive
- Bugscope Team here we are looking at some of the scales on the painted lady butterfly
- Bugscope Team it is very difficult to keep them from charging up with electrons
- Bugscope Team when we image them
- Bugscope Team this is cool
- Bugscope Team these are coils of the proboscis
- 10:00am
- Student why is the tung so curly
- Bugscope Team it fills the proboscis with hemolymph when it wants to extend it
- Bugscope Team like one of those party favors at New Years'
- Student how juciey was the primantice
- Bugscope Team hemolymph is bug blood
- Bugscope Team it is curly so it will be retracted when the butterfly flies
- Bugscope Team the head, apparently, was full of hemolymph itself
- Student thats cool did it pop
- Bugscope Team no not this time
- Student that would have been sweet
- Bugscope Team sometimes spiders pop in the 'scope, and it can shut down the vacuum
- Bugscope Team all of the samples we are looking at are in a vacuum chamber
- Student the bell rang so her is mrs. clark seya
- Bugscope Team okay See ya!
- Bugscope Team bye!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Student hi, Its Mrs. Clark. That class was not nearly as organized as 1st hour! We wil work on that.
- Bugscope Team well we were not so organized either, perhaps
- Student Okay, be back at 10:25
- Bugscope Team I am blaming it on our network, skipping out sometimes, here at the nerd paradise
- Bugscope Team ok mrs clark see you for now
- Student There are suveral presets of these kids, they will be excited!
- Bugscope Team brb
- 10:20am
- 10:28am
- Student Hi were here
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- Student what are we looking at?
- Bugscope Team this is a tiny portion of a wasp antenna
- Bugscope Team and we are looking at a pollen grain
- Bugscope Team also, below that are those long slots with placoid sensilla
- Bugscope Team the spikes make it more likely to stick onto things
- Student awesome
- Bugscope Team the sensilla are part of what makes an antenna function like an antenna -- gathering info from, for example, scents in the air
- Student what can your total magnification be?
- Bugscope Team now we are up so high that the samplew is charging up with electrons
- Bugscope Team The placoid sensilla, which we could see when we were at a lower magnification, are only found in bees and wasps (so far)
- Bugscope Team we can go to a million times mag but you can imagine there would be little to image at a super high mag like that
- Bugscope Team we can take publishable imagesm at generally no higher than 200,000s
- Bugscope Team x that is
- 10:33am
- Bugscope Team now you see the head of the wasp and you can see where we found the pollen, at the place where the antenna touches the jaw
- Student thaats really cool
- Bugscope Team thousands of tiny ommatidia
- Student do they see one image or thousands?
- Bugscope Team like little lenses
- Student whats crystlline?
- Bugscope Team i think they see thousands of bits of images, where some parts will overlap. sort of like a jigsaw puzzle
- Bugscope Team Annie told us earlier that the current concept of how the eye facets form an image is that the wasp sees a single full image broken up into sort of dots
- Bugscope Team like Cate says
- Bugscope Team crystalline like glass, like a lens
- Bugscope Team this is the head of the polyphemus moth
- Bugscope Team and here we see a claw
- 10:38am
- Bugscope Team The current theory is that insects see patches of dark and light--kind of like a photo in the newspaper. Of course no one really "knows" what insects actually see.
- Student o ok
- Bugscope Team the last few segments of the arm are called 'tarsi,' or 'tarsomeres'
- Bugscope Team the pad we see between the claws is called the pulvillus
- Bugscope Team it is what helps the insect stick to vertical surfaces
- Bugscope Team many insects do not walk on their claws but on the few segments closer to the body from the claw
- Bugscope Team and often those segments -- some of the tarsi -- have lots of tenent setae on them that help the insect to stick to surfaces
- Student so those hairs on the pulvillus help it stick?
Bugscope Team yes they are like suction cups or sometimes they look like they act more like velcro
- Bugscope Team yes -- in some insects they are more prominent
- Bugscope Team this is the stinger of the cicada killer
- 10:43am
- Student That's a cool stinger-is the Cicada Killer a wasp or a bee?
- Bugscope Team it is a wasp
- Student is the stinger always out?
- Bugscope Team a big one at that
- Bugscope Team they paralyze cicadas with their sting and then inject eggs into its body
- Bugscope Team the eggs hatch and become larvae that feed on the insides of the cicada until they hatch
- Bugscope Team we always find them with the sting out
- Student can the stinger be pulled out of the ciicada's body? i noticed it's not barbed, like a bee's.
Bugscope Team yes a cicada killer can sting mulitple cicadas in its lifetime
- Bugscope Team I am not sure whether it can be withdrawn into the body of the wasp
- Bugscope Team the barbs on a bee make it so the stinger stays in whoever it stings
- Student uggh. that's nasty.surely the cicada dies.
Bugscope Team yup, the cicada dies and the wasp larvae eat the cicada
- Bugscope Team but yes it is not barbed, and that means it can sting more than once
- Bugscope Team yes the cicada does not recover
- Bugscope Team Hi Beth!
- Bugscope Team laying a lot of eggs
- 10:50am
- Bugscope Team stingers are modified ovipositors, and male ants, bees, and wasps do not have them
- Bugscope Team this is the curled up proboscis of the painted lady butterfly
- Student poor male bees. no wonder the queen bee is in charge.
- Bugscope Team often times male bees, wasp, and ants do not live very long--they certainly don't live long in social species
- Bugscope Team it is curled up for storage when the butterfly is not using it to drink nectar
- Bugscope Team Annie has told us in the past that the moth or butterfly can push hemolymph into the tubelike structure to force it to uncurl
- Student that's pretty cool. isn't it true that butterflies taste with their feet?
- Bugscope Team some of them do -- Monarchs, for example'
- Bugscope Team they have special setae that allows them to not only feel but taste/smell
- Bugscope Team they have spines on their feet that scrape the surface of what they landm upon
- Bugscope Team and those special setae can then sense the smell that comes from that surface
- Student sorry we gotta go. thsi was fun! i'm a science geek too, so i loved it.
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- 10:55am
- Bugscope Team is this it for the day?
- Bugscope Team thank you for your questions
- Student hello...this next class is our last session. we will meet with you around 12:05. THanks!!!!
- Bugscope Team okay cool -- see you just after noon
- 11:03am
- Student actually I meant 11:05....are you stilll there? we are here?
- Bugscope Team yes
- Bugscope Team yeah no problem
- Student sorry
- Bugscope Team we are good!
- Student do they taste with there tounge
- Bugscope Team at the tip of the tongue, when you can see it, it appears that they have chemosensory setae
- Bugscope Team i dont think we see the tip today
- Student how much magnification can you go up to
Bugscope Team we usually dont go any higher than 200,000x. we can go higher, but we often don't see anything meaningful
- Bugscope Team with insects we often don't go above 40,000x
- 11:08am
- Bugscope Team the scope can magnify up to 800,000x though, but like cate said, it's hard to get an image at that mag
- Bugscope Team when we do bugscope we keep the distance from where the electron beam comes from to the sample kind of long
- Bugscope Team if that distance waws shorter we would get better resolution but we would not be able to go to very low magnifications
- Bugscope Team 'was shorter'
- Bugscope Team this is cool
- Student how big is the microscope
Bugscope Team it's the size of a desk, here's a pic of it: http://www.itg.uiuc.edu/ms/equipment/microscopes/esem/
- Bugscope Team hmm, deflated ommatidea?
- Student wjat are the hairs
- Bugscope Team now we see individual eye facets -- called ommatidia -- on the painted lady butterfly
- Bugscope Team as Alex says they are slightly deflated
- Bugscope Team now we can see, through the setae, some of the fine structure of the eye
- Bugscope Team insects are often hairier than they look. That is because they are covered in hairs called setae (or seta for singular). They need these hairs to feel the environment around them through their hard exoskeleton
- Bugscope Team Butterflies and moths are special because they are covered in scales. They have the added bonus of helping them get out of "hairy" situations. They can shed them when they need to get out of a spider web for instance
- 11:13am
- Student what part are we lookimg at?
- Bugscope Team these are some of the tenent setae on a housefly's claw
- Bugscope Team or on the pulvillus between the claws, to be more specific
- Bugscope Team tenent setae are like sticky little pads that help the fly stick to surfaces like walls, or your arm
- 11:18am
- Bugscope Team this one is my favorite
- Student How dose the mouth work?
Bugscope Team it opens like a gate. it works on a hinge
- Bugscope Team yeah a contemplative wasp
- Bugscope Team the antenna are curving his face, kinda like a hairdo
- Student What are the hairs?
Bugscope Team those are more setae.
- Bugscope Team you are doing a great job controlling the microscope
- Bugscope Team which are basically hairs, it's just for insects we are supposed to call them setae
- Bugscope Team see-tee
- Bugscope Team they are a bit like cat whiskers in that they help the insect sense its environment
- Student can we have a job there since we're so good at the microscope
Bugscope Team heh, just don't take my job please!!!
- 11:24am
- Bugscope Team Cate is pretty good -- you would have some serious competition.
- Student bring it on
- Bugscope Team haha
- Bugscope Team she thrives on it
- Student we;re trying to get to the mothhead preset
- Bugscope Team cate moved it to the moth head
- Student are the eyes dried out?
- Bugscope Team they have juju on them that has dried
- Student what in the world is juju
- Bugscope Team their was some kind of film that has cracked, and the eyes are underneath
- Bugscope Team juju = dirt, junk, stuff, crud, you know.... juju
- Bugscope Team it's an all-purpose word
- 11:29am
- Student where is its mouth?
- Bugscope Team the eye also seems to have fungus on it
- Bugscope Team the mouth is covered by scales, I think
- Bugscope Team the mouth area should have a proboscis near it, but i don't see one in this image...
- Bugscope Team 'cause we mounted it ventral side up
- Bugscope Team sometimes adult insects do not eat
- Bugscope Team sometimes the females eat but the males don't
- Student then what do they do for food?
- Bugscope Team I don't know about these moths
- Bugscope Team they live on, like, love
- Bugscope Team love and juju
- Bugscope Team or they live to mate
- Student don't you wish the whole world lived on that?
Bugscope Team YES!!!
- Bugscope Team well I would like to eat as well
- Bugscope Team seems like you could do both
- Bugscope Team but the insect world is pretty cruel
- Bugscope Team from our perspective
- Student what are we looking at?
- Bugscope Team this is a close-up of the wasp antenna
- Student reat phptos team
- 11:34am
- Student great*
- Student can we publish it?
- Bugscope Team the flatter things are called placoid sensilla
- Bugscope Team sure!
- Bugscope Team all the chat and images are saved on your bugscope member page: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-077, you can download any image you want and use it to study or whatever
- Bugscope Team if we want to publish we would go to a much shorter working distance
- Bugscope Team to allow us to capture much better images
- Bugscope Team ah, look a pollen grain on the right!
- Bugscope Team the placoid sensilla are sensory 'collectors'
- Bugscope Team they are chemosensors in this case, I think
- Bugscope Team we see something very similar on roach legs
- Bugscope Team when we see brightness like this it is sometimes due to the gold-palladium coat on the sample not carrying the electron charge to ground
Bugscope Team the sample thinks it's a member of the san diego chargers i guess....
- Bugscope Team it is often quite apparent on scales, like where we are now
- Bugscope Team these are in a way analogous to feathers on a bird
- Student thank you very much
- Student we will see you again in october for my last two classes!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- 11:39am
- Bugscope Team thank you!
- Bugscope Team Good deal!
- Bugscope Team Yeah I saw you were on the schedule again.
- Bugscope Team we will look forward to it
- Bugscope Team october 1st, we'll see you again
- Bugscope Team is this a biology class?
- Bugscope Team october 1st, 1:45PM
- Student yes
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Bugscope Team I need to write a bunch of questions by noon, so over and out, and thank you!
- Student later!
- Bugscope Team chow!
- 11:44am
- Bugscope Team rxl stopped, session disabled, nice session everyone, goodbye!
