Connected on 2008-10-16 10:00:00 from , NC, US
- 8:55am
- Teacher Hello...We are so excited!!
- 9:01am
- 9:07am
- 9:13am
- Bugscope Team Good morning Tam!
- Bugscope Team We have been setting up presets and were not watching this page...
- Bugscope Team So Welcome!
- Teacher Great...Thank you!
- Bugscope Team And the presets are done, so you can try driving if you'd like.
- Bugscope Team you may also choose from among the presets.
- Bugscope Team Let us know if you have any trouble or need any help.
- 9:18am
- Teacher WOW
- Bugscope Team and you can see scales here, plus many places where they rubbed off.
- Bugscope Team moths are often hard to image because of the scales -- they charge up with electrons
- Teacher Are the spots places where scales are missing?
- Bugscope Team yes -- exactly
- Bugscope Team often the moth or butterfly can shed its scales and still be ok. It is sometimes a defense mechanism. If it is stuck in a web, it can let some scales go to get free
- Teacher Hi Cate, Are the bumps where new scales are forming?
Bugscope Team I don't think they live long enough for the scales to grow back
- Bugscope Team we see scales on silverfish and skippers as well
- 9:23am
- Teacher lol
- Teacher What is the part that looks like coral?
- Bugscope Team when we see the screen very bright like this it may be because the sample is charging up with electrons and cannot shed that electrical energy to ground
- Bugscope Team those are other places where scales are missing -- on the lower left?
- Teacher Should we move to another sample.
- Bugscope Team you can also take the mag down if you would like to look around the moth
- Teacher How do you prevent the charging up?
- Bugscope Team sometimes we can't, very well
- Bugscope Team insects like moths and butterflies will often charge badly. Other insects we have today aren't so bad
- Bugscope Team the samples are coated with gold-palladium using a sputter coater, which can place a very thin layer of the conductive metal on the surface
- 9:28am
- Bugscope Team the gold-palladium layer is a few to several nanometers thick
- Teacher John here. That looks like a golf ball
- Bugscope Team yes that is one of the compound eyes
- Bugscope Team feel free to choose from among the presets when you have exhausted what may be interesting on this sample
- Bugscope Team here is the owlfly larva claw
- Bugscope Team there are two little hairs near the middle of the screen that i think are trigger hairs-- hairs that when it touches something with them, the claws will automatically grasp the object
- Bugscope Team owlflies are related to dragonflies
- Bugscope Team they are predatory as larvae and adults
- Bugscope Team this is the first time we have had an adult in the 'scope
- 9:33am
- Teacher Cricket here. Very interesting.
- Bugscope Team on some insects there is a pad of tenent setae -- called a pulvillus -- in this location
- Bugscope Team Hi Cricket!
- Bugscope Team Hi Malik!
- Teacher Hello...Do the tenent setae serve the same purpose as the trigger hairs?
- Guest Hi Scot!
- Teacher Malik????
- Teacher Oh Hello.
- Bugscope Team sometimes we get guests who log on
- Bugscope Team Malik is a guest who is checking us out from somewhere else in the world
- Guest I am in a session with a group of teachers talking about Technology Integreation into the curriculum - I think that they will like this resource - Thanks for having it!
- Guest I am in Minneapolis,MN at Sojouner Truth School
- Bugscope Team the tenent setae function like little suction cups or hook and loop structures (Velcro) and help insects crawl on vertical surfaces
- Teacher Are the thorn like hairs the ones used for gripping?
Bugscope Team we see those types of hairs on spiders sometimes. they might sense vibration
- Teacher Cool
- Bugscope Team Some of the thornlike hairs (setae, or bristles) may be used to help grip. Some of them may also have a mechanosensory function, as Cate says.
- Teacher Are the wrinkles veins?
- Bugscope Team the wrinkles are places where the exoskeleton fits together
- 9:38am
- Bugscope Team insects have their 'bones' on the outside, sort of like if you were to wear armor
- Bugscope Team and that is why we see so many tiny setae
- Bugscope Team some of the setae also have a chemosensory function
- Teacher Joint?
- Bugscope Team that is, the insect or arthropod can sense smells with some of the 'hairs'
- Bugscope Team yes this is a joint
- Bugscope Team looks like elephant skin, in a way
- Guest This is incredible!
- Bugscope Team but we would not think of it as skin
- Teacher Too awesome!!
- Bugscope Team Manean this is fun for us, as well.
- Teacher It does offer protect like skin...yes?
- Guest is the "skin" made out of the same material as the rest of the exoskeleton?
- Bugscope Team so it is a thinner more flexible chitin, or cuticle
- Bugscope Team (at the joint it is thinner)
- 9:44am
- Bugscope Team sometimes we have to remember that these insects are dry, and we are seeing surfaces that are a little shrunken compared to their live state
- Bugscope Team when we see these horizontal lines on the image, that is more evidence of charging, where the electrons cannot go quickly to ground
- Bugscope Team there are a lot of presets, so feel free to try them as soon as you have seen enough of one area
- Bugscope Team this is the base of one of those plumose setae
- Bugscope Team we don't always know the functions of what we see in all of the insects we look at
- Teacher You are doing a great job!!!
- Bugscope Team really you all are doing a great job navigating the microscope from far away
- Bugscope Team you can see the micron bar in this view
- Teacher Tks. It looks like there is a muscle or something at the base that can controll the movement.
- Bugscope Team 3 microns is one and a half bacteria (bacillus -- the rod-shaped ones) long
- 9:49am
- Teacher WOW
- Bugscope Team there are likely muscle attachments on the inside of the exoskeleton that extend to the bases of the moveable setae
- Teacher This microscope is incredible.
- Bugscope Team so an anthrax bacterium, for example, would be about 2 microns -- 2 micrometers -- long
- Bugscope Team we are very happy to have it
- Teacher John wants to move on. Is there anything on this sample that we need to see.
- Teacher Anything you all find interesting.
- Bugscope Team you can take the mag down low and cruise around for a last look before moving on
- Bugscope Team what is kind of cool about Bugscope is that we may not find all of the neat things to see in a particular sample
- Bugscope Team so you may come upon features we are unaware of
- Bugscope Team here you can see one jaw, at the top
- Bugscope Team this owlfly larva we dropped, accidentally, so that its head stuck in some silver paint
- Teacher Is that the part that looks like it has thorns on it?
- Bugscope Team but there is another larva that looks great
- 9:54am
- Bugscope Team yes the part with thorns
- Bugscope Team on a lower magnification, it would look like the insect has antlers
- Bugscope Team as Cate said earlier they are related to antlions
- Teacher lol antlers
- Bugscope Team now you can see where the tiny claw was
- Bugscope Team yes some fierce antlers
- Teacher amazing!
- Bugscope Team as Cate also mentioned with the claw -- the jaws are likely set up with trigger hairs that active them when something comes into their range
- Bugscope Team this, now, is from an adult of the same insect
- Guest so the bite reaction is purely chemical?
- Bugscope Team Manaen it depends on the species -- probably most bite at will rather than automatically
- Bugscope Team we get to work with trapjaw ant people sometimes, and it is amazing how fast the jaws react
- 10:00am
- Teacher Interesting. You must love your job!!
- Guest i am just amazed at how sophisticated insect colonies can be or even individual bugs for that matter considering the brain size
Bugscope Team in some ways they are programmed to function the way they do
- Bugscope Team it is a lot of fun getting to work with kids or even pre-service teachers.
- Teacher John - Purely instinct not thought.
- Bugscope Team yes we like to ascribe anthropomorphic qualities to insects but it is unlikely, most of the time, that they are motivated the ways we might think
- Bugscope Team this is cool -- the head of the owlfly with its large eyes
- Teacher Is the hole where it is missing a antenae?
- Bugscope Team yes exactly
- Bugscope Team hi everyone!
- Bugscope Team one of the antennae is missing -- sometimes we are so careless ; )
- Bugscope Team Hi Annie!
- Bugscope Team Annie is our entomologist.
- 10:05am
- Bugscope Team she tries her best to keep us out of trouble
- Teacher It gives it character.
- Bugscope Team haha yes, I try
- Teacher Hi Annie.
- Bugscope Team Hi Tam!
- Bugscope Team sometimes legs fall off, it happens
- Bugscope Team spiders can make their legs fall off by choice
- Teacher A great way to escape.
- Bugscope Team they have a function called autotomy in which if they sense poison entering a leg they can jettison that leg
- Bugscope Team and it would allow them to escape, as you suggested
- Bugscope Team Many arthropods can easily lose legs to escape predators--it is a fact that anyone who has tried to collect insects for display collections learns very quickly!
- Bugscope Team like geckos losing their tails
- Bugscope Team this is the head of the wheelbug
- Teacher John - Yes many of mine are missing parts.
- 10:10am
- Bugscope Team it has one very formidable looking proboscis
- Teacher They have sucking and piercing mouth parts..right?
Bugscope Team yes, they are predators and they use their mouths to suck the guts and juice from their prey
- Bugscope Team yes
- Bugscope Team serious
- Bugscope Team and we lost one of its antennae as well
- Teacher We are looking at this upside down?
- Bugscope Team um sort of
- Bugscope Team it is reclining to one side, at least
- Teacher yum..ambush bug
- Bugscope Team you can see, below the compound eye, that it has ocelli
- Bugscope Team but you need not go there
- Bugscope Team those scales came from prey, perhaps
- Bugscope Team lots of setae on the exoskeleton
- Bugscope Team and it is sort of dusty as well
- Bugscope Team moth and mosquito scales are easily dislodged
- Bugscope Team you should be able to modify the focus to get the background rather than the foreground
- 10:15am
- Bugscope Team if you wish
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Bugscope Team a scanning electron microscope has very good depth of focus
- Bugscope Team because the probe size -- the diameter of the electron beam -- is very small
- Teacher Excellent...truly exploring a different world.
- Bugscope Team now you could take the mag lower and see more of that surface, and it would stay roughly in focus
- Bugscope Team the microscope is parfocal -- meaning that if we focus at a high mag and then go to a low mag it will stay in focus
- Bugscope Team assuming the area we are viewing is uniform in depth, or height
- Bugscope Team it's like a forest of downed trees
- Teacher A magnificent piece of gear!!!
- Bugscope Team most of the people who use it, normally, are not imaging insects
- Bugscope Team just me!
- Teacher someone left their scales behind.
- Bugscope Team some people are looking at bone cells, or silicon structures they have made, or plant material..
- Bugscope Team yes -- they didn't come from the ambush bug
- 10:20am
- Teacher it is perfect for looking at insects
- Bugscope Team kids like looking at the insects upclose too.
- Bugscope Team which is why we mostly just do insects
- Bugscope Team but we sometimes have other things on the stubs like today we have some salt
- Bugscope Team insects are among the few things that are always interesting in the SEM
- Teacher My kids love insects....
- Bugscope Team like Annie!
- Teacher What about a grain of wheat...
- Bugscope Team we could try it next time
- Teacher Is the ball that we wee just a foreign particle
- Bugscope Team we have never looked at wheat that I can remember
- Bugscope Team After many hundred of insect SEMs, they can get a little boring....of course I am looking at the same parts over and over
- Bugscope Team the ball may be pollen
- Bugscope Team we often see pollen and/or mold spores
- Bugscope Team sometimes they are very similar
- Teacher Annie what is your favorite insect??
- Teacher It looks like a crab
- Bugscope Team Longhorned beetles. That is what I study
- Bugscope Team it could be taking her a while to decide, but maybe a cerambycid?
- Bugscope Team ha yeah
- 10:25am
- Bugscope Team Of course!!!
- Bugscope Team this is the underside of the head of a Japanese beetle
- Bugscope Team here you can see the mandibular and maxillary palps
- Teacher The plate structure moves down.
- Bugscope Team hey cool we can learn from you -- mouthparts are complex
- Bugscope Team Longhorned beetles are in the family cerambycidae
- Teacher Ah
- Bugscope Team Some well known cerambycids are locust borers, the Asian longhorned beetle, the valley elderberry borer (an endangered species in California), and the old house borer
- 10:31am
- Teacher Yikes what is all the info at the top.
- Bugscope Team try refreshing your browser winder
- Bugscope Team window
- Teacher Excellent
- Teacher You are all awesome!!!!!
- Bugscope Team :)
- Teacher So this is inside the mouth??
Bugscope Team this is inside the palp of the cricket. a palp is something that manipulates food or tastes/smells the food
- Bugscope Team this is unusual
- Bugscope Team they are not often hollow like this
- 10:36am
- Bugscope Team in other insects
- Teacher Why is the Cricket different?
- Bugscope Team there may be some other function we are not aware of
- Bugscope Team Crickets are in the order Orthoptera, and beetles are in the order Coleoptera
- Bugscope Team we looked at these setae earlier, thinking that they would perhaps have pores at the tips, but we did not see any
- Bugscope Team with the idea that the setae were chemoreceptors
- Bugscope Team they could still be...
- Bugscope Team this is cool
- Bugscope Team is this a mosquito mouth?
Bugscope Team yes one of yours actually
- Bugscope Team these are two of the six stylets that form the fascicle
- Bugscope Team yes
- Teacher ouch
- Bugscope Team I collected this mosquito from my leg
- Bugscope Team or my arm
- Bugscope Team this is the sheath that normally holds the fascicle
- Bugscope Team that was handy, Annie
- Bugscope Team didn't have to go far to get it
- 10:41am
- Bugscope Team you can see that mosquitoes have scales as well
- Bugscope Team these are on the outside of the sheath, which I think is called the labium
- Bugscope Team no I think now we were on a leg, sorry
- Bugscope Team there is a good image of the labium/fascicle
- Teacher sorry now i'm lost
- Bugscope Team when the mosquito bites the fascicle remains fairly straight while the sheath bows away from it
- Teacher what an ugly booger
- Bugscope Team obviously we get lost as well
- Bugscope Team the eyes have dried and shriveled a bit
- Bugscope Team you can see the bases of the antennae
- Bugscope Team Haha, I got us a lifetime supply
- Bugscope Team the antennal fossae or antennal sockets
- Bugscope Team cool, Annie
- Bugscope Team these are some nice skeeters
- 10:46am
- Bugscope Team this is the other owlfly larva
- Bugscope Team insect larvae don't have to follow the six legs rule if they don't want to.
- Teacher Jacquie is 3 she says yucko!!
- Bugscope Team aww
- Bugscope Team Owflies are predators, they eat other insects
- Bugscope Team the edge of the world
- Teacher yikes...a scary place.
- Bugscope Team you can see the jaws a little better here
- Teacher So this is a friendly bug?
Bugscope Team Not so friendly, especially to any insect that is smaller than them. They sit still on tree branches with their jaws open until an unsuspecting insect wanders close to them. Then SNAP they close their jaws and eat the other insect.
- Bugscope Team and the tiny eyes on little stalks
- 10:51am
- Bugscope Team um I think it is a mean little dude
- Bugscope Team there is fungus on the surface
- Teacher fungus amongus
- Bugscope Team these were probably collected into a moist container
- Bugscope Team yeah the fungus was going to town on it
- Bugscope Team It probably could bite you...and it would sting and itch a little. But not any worse than a paper cut or a pin prick.
- Bugscope Team this is a great view of one of the eyes
- Bugscope Team The bite would sting...but it doesn't sting, per se. I should clarify
- Bugscope Team I imagine as kids they don't see so well
- Bugscope Team when they grow up they have those large compound eyes
- Bugscope Team Annie do we know that they have trigger hairs that actuate the jaws?
Bugscope Team Probably...I am not sure if anyone has studied them specifically
- Teacher what is the hair under the eyes
- 10:56am
- Bugscope Team Owlflies are not very well studied, actually.
- Bugscope Team we get to see a lot of insects that may not have been thoroughly characterized
- Bugscope Team this is the tip of the antenna of the owlfly
- Bugscope Team the grown-up owlfly
- Bugscope Team you have an owlfly adult?
- Bugscope Team Awesome
- Bugscope Team did I collect it?
- Bugscope Team came from you
- Bugscope Team yup
- Bugscope Team Cool
- Bugscope Team ha
- Bugscope Team haha
- Teacher It looks like it has dandruff
- Bugscope Team some of the dandruff may be particles called brochosomes
- Teacher Amazing
- Bugscope Team or brochosomes- which are tiny whiffle-like balls that comes only from leafhoppers
- Teacher Cool
- 11:02am
- Teacher only from leafhoppers
- Teacher ???
- Bugscope Team either is has been eating leafhoppers or since it was in a vial with a lot of other insects, maybe there was a leafhopper in the vial
- Bugscope Team yes leafhoppers have an 'anointing' behavior in which they spread the waxy little brochosomes onto the surface of their bodies
- Bugscope Team I think I also collected some leafhoppers when I collected this owlfly
- Bugscope Team the brochosomes may help keep eggs from drying out
- Teacher Leafhoppers sound awesome
- Bugscope Team sometimes we see them in large patches on leafhoppers
- Bugscope Team before we have to go -- check out preset 11
- Teacher and they a pretty too.
- Bugscope Team Leafhoppers can be very beautiful. However, they are serious pests because they can transmit diseases to plants
- Teacher Yikes I am glad I haven't seen them here.
- 11:07am
- Bugscope Team Tam try going to preset 11, and you may be able to see the brochosomes in more detail
- Bugscope Team They can also stunt the growth of plants and they excrete a sticky substance called honeydew that attracts ants and can cause the growth of mold
- Teacher When I click on preset 11 nothing happens.
- Bugscope Team there are good leafhoppers and bad leafhoppers, just like witches in the land of Oz
- Teacher So they are pests
Bugscope Team Yup they are pests
- Teacher is this 11?
Bugscope Team here we are at 11, and we can see the brochosomes mroe clearly
- Bugscope Team now you can almost make out the little shapes
- Bugscope Team 11 moved a bit since we set it up -- that happens sometimes
- Teacher cool
- Bugscope Team so scott said these little brochosomes are around 400nm big
- Bugscope Team Tam we will have to give up the microscope soon, but we would like to try to get a slightly better image of the brochs before we go.
- Bugscope Team thats around the wavelength of light
- Teacher teenie
- 11:12am
- Teacher Before you go Annie...are there any insects you want us to look for in nc and send to you?
Bugscope Team Wow. Thanks Tam, I dunno
- Teacher WOW
- Bugscope Team wow yeah those look nice
- Bugscope Team I am trying to finish up my research, but if you find anything super cool, you can always send the to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team the one almost dead center is about 400 nm in diameter
- Teacher John has over 100 in his collection.
- Bugscope Team That's a nice collection!
- Teacher WOW scot that is incredible
- Bugscope Team John should hang onto them for future study! There are plenty of insects to go around!
- Bugscope Team to get this image we took the 'scope to a shorter working distance
- Bugscope Team it is live, still, of course
- Bugscope Team but Tam it is time for us to peel out
- Bugscope Team you can visit your member session page at any time to view the chat or the saved images at http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-085/
- Bugscope Team you can access the images and a chat transcript from your session on line
- 11:17am
- Teacher Thank you so much!!!! God Bless!! Tam, John, Cricket & Jacquie
- Bugscope Team Can you connect with us again next year?
- Bugscope Team Thank You All!
- Bugscope Team Thank you all too.
- Teacher You bet...chat with you next year.
- Bugscope Team Goodbye everyone!
- Teacher Cate Thank you for all your hard work.
- Bugscope Team no problem have a good rest of the day
