Connected on 2008-11-21 14:00:00 from , TX, US
- 12:17pm
- Bugscope Team Okay setting up now.
- 12:22pm
- 12:28pm
- 12:43pm
- Bugscope Team It still wouldn't let you in as a teacher?
- Bugscope Team Welcome, anyway, Mr P.
- 12:49pm
- Bugscope Team Session is unlocked. Be right back. You should be able to drive...
- Guest hi my name is cameron are we ready to go
- Bugscope Team Cool Hi Cameron!
- 12:54pm
- Guest Are we going to be lucky enough to get a scientist for our session?
- Bugscope Team I am calling an entomologist right now.
- Bugscope Team I am your Dial-a-Entomologist
- Bugscope Team this is the antenna of a housefly, right now
- Bugscope Team Hi Annie!
- Guest wat are we looking at
- Bugscope Team this is the antenna of a house fly, close up
- Bugscope Team Hello all
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down you can see where you are
- Bugscope Team these are sensilla on the antenna of a housefly
- Bugscope Team Mr P you should be able to drive -- is it not working?
- Guest No, not working
- Guest give the student the wheel!
- 1:00pm
- Bugscope Team Here we can see the head of the housefly
- Bugscope Team this is most likely a female because the eyes are widely separated.
- Bugscope Team hello down there?
- Bugscope Team do you see controls on the student computer?
- Bugscope Team Male flies generally have eyes that meet each other in the middle of the head--this increases their ability to detect females that are flying overhead.
- Guest got it
- Bugscope Team like to the right of the chat box do you see presets? and to the right of the screen above do you see Magnify, Navigation, etc.?
- Guest We are ready...
- Guest Addie isa asking about the eye
Bugscope Team What does she want to know about the eye
- Bugscope Team this is the head of one of the ant lions
- Bugscope Team you cannot see an eye on this, as far as I can tell
- Bugscope Team I can only see jaws right now
- Bugscope Team what we see is a droplet of fluid, probably hemolymph
- Guest Camille would like to know how old the ant lion is? or how long they live?
Bugscope Team Most ant lions have a single generation in a year...but in some areas, there are probably multiple generations. So, I would say this antlion is probably a few weeks old.
- Bugscope Team drive the microscope
- Guest we are driving
- 1:05pm
- Bugscope Team But, it also probably spent some time in diapause as an egg or as a pupa
- Bugscope Team they resemble, very closely, owlfly larvae, which unfortunately we do not have in the 'scope today
- Bugscope Team The life history of each species of insect is a little different and it is hard to generalize
- Guest Gabriel would like to know how big they can get?
Bugscope Team The largest adult antlion I have ever seen was about 3 inches long--they get pretty big.
- Bugscope Team You might want to try the "click to center" control, rather than the "click to drive"; it can be a little easier to get used to
- 1:10pm
- Guest Gabriel would also like to know if antlions will eat other ant lions?
Bugscope Team I bet they would as larvae...they are voracious predators of any insect or arthopods that wanders into its pit
- Bugscope Team now you can focus, in steps
- Bugscope Team see if it gets worse, or better
- Bugscope Team and go in the 'better' direction
- Guest Robert would like to know if they can bite or hurt humans
Bugscope Team They can bite--it sort of hurts, but not too bad.
- Guest Bradley wants to know about those hairs
- Bugscope Team So, I should clarify---as larvae antlions dig themselves into pits in the sand. The larvae sit and wait with their jaws open until an ant or another arthopod falls into the pit-then MUNCH-the antlion eats the prey item. As adults antlions fly around. They don't live in pits as adults.
- Bugscope Team the hairs we see are called 'setae'
- Guest Adrian wants to know why they are called ant lions?
Bugscope Team Because as larvae, antlions bury themselves at the bottom of sandy pits. And ants fall into the pits and then the ant lion gobbles the ants up.
- Bugscope Team ant lion jaws have a piercing/sucking function; they inject poison into their prey to paralyze them, and then they suck the juices out of the prey
- 1:15pm
- Guest destiney wants to know how do they lay eggs?
Bugscope Team Female insects have ovipositors through which they lay eggs...the ovipositor sometimes is long and thin, and the mother will use that long ovipositor to lay her eggs deep in wood, under the soil, or even inside other insects.
- Guest The class is asking about the big circle on the head
- Bugscope Team Cate just figured out for us where the eye is
- Bugscope Team you can see it below the round glob of hemolymph
- Bugscope Team the eye is the bumpy part to the far middle right
- Guest do they have poison
- Bugscope Team the big circle is hemolymph, which is like blood to an insect
- Bugscope Team yes they have poison that paralyzes their prey
- Bugscope Team the poison also makes the internal organs of the prey soften up and liquefy
- Bugscope Team they are much like spiders that way
- Guest What are their predators?
- Bugscope Team they also will eat spiders
- 1:20pm
- Bugscope Team They are probably prey to birds and bats.
- Guest how do they suck the blood out there pray
- Bugscope Team their jaws have a piercing and sucking function, so the fluids in the prey go into the jaws
- Guest can they survive in the water?
Bugscope Team I don't think that antlions can survive very long in the water, although they may have some adaptations that can help them survive flooding. The larvae are usually only found in places with sandy soil, and I imagine some of those areas are along streams and rivers which occasionally flood. Antlions are not aquatic insects though.
- Bugscope Team much like the way spiders work
- Guest Bradley wants to know what we are seeing at 20000x magnification?
- Bugscope Team ant lions are larvae, and eventually they will metamorphose into adults
- Bugscope Team we were looking at the cuticle very close up
- Bugscope Team antlions have lots of tiny setae (hairlike projections) that help them stay stuck in the sand
- Bugscope Team you can see that it has tiny little claws
- 1:26pm
- Bugscope Team there are two more antlions on this stub if you would like to click on those presets
- Guest Can we give you control so you can show us the eye?
- Bugscope Team here it is
- Bugscope Team did you see how we got there?
- Guest So how do they work?
- Bugscope Team it is just below the glob of hemolymph
- Guest Aaron wants to know how to tell the female and males?
Bugscope Team I am not an expert on antlions, but generally, female insects are larger than males.
- Bugscope Team it is likely they have poor eyesight -- these are like simple eyes on a stalk
- Bugscope Team it is a compound eye, the bumps are each a facet of the eye, the antlion probably doesnt rely on eyesight too much if they are this small and simple looking
- Bugscope Team er what scott said, i was wrong
- Bugscope Team maybe you could drive to the tip of one of the jaws and we could look for poison pores
- Bugscope Team you are doing a good job driving!
- Bugscope Team I don't see any pores yet...
- Bugscope Team when we look at spiders sometimes they are easy to see
- 1:31pm
- Bugscope Team hmm I don't see a pore, still
- Bugscope Team I brought the focus up for us
- Bugscope Team It is kind of dirty
- Guest Zach is driving...how about you take us to where you think the pore is Scot?
- Bugscope Team Zach is doing a good job. I don't see one yet.
- Bugscope Team we might be viewing it from a bad angle if we cant see a pre, or the dirt is covering it
- Guest Amanda wants to know where the jaws came from?
- Bugscope Team pore*
- Bugscope Team now we can see that there is an apparent slit along the inside of the jaw there
- Bugscope Team it may be that the angle, as Cate said, is not good for us
- Guest Camille wants to know if these kind of insects have brains?
Bugscope Team ALL insects have brains. All spiders have brains, all crabs have brains, all millipedes and centipedes and pretty much anything with a head has a brain.
- Bugscope Team they have brains, and where the jaws came from? they grew -- is that what Amanda meant?
- 1:36pm
- Bugscope Team here you can see two antennae, and smooth compound eyes, and ocelli on top of the head, as well as the jaws
- Guest How big are their brains?
Bugscope Team Well, it depends on the insect. I would say that an insect brain takes up about 1/4-1/3 of an insect brain
- Bugscope Team wasp head!
- Bugscope Team wasps are related to ants -- they are both Hymenoptera
- Bugscope Team see the facets of the compound eye?
- Bugscope Team larger insects have larger brains, but that doesn't mean that they are "smarter"
- Bugscope Team takes up about 1/4 to 1/3 of the head
- Bugscope Team in fruit flies a large component of the brain is devoted to processing visual signals
- Bugscope Team and it is likely that is true with many flying insects
- Guest How does this microscope work?
Bugscope Team Cate put the samples onto an aluminum stub, covered with carbon doublestick tape. She helped stick them down and make them conductive using silver paint, where we cannot usually see it. Then she coated the sample with gold-palladium using a sputter coater. The sputter coater puts several nanometers of gold-palladium on the sample...
Bugscope Team After the sample is coated, it goes into the electron microscope chamber, where it is pumped down to a good vacuum for viewing. We then turn on the electron beam, which scans across the sample...
Bugscope Team the electron beam causes what are called secondary electrons to be ejected from what we are looking at, and those secondary electrons make up the image we see.
- Bugscope Team right, thanks scott!
- Guest There is a comment that the mouth looks weird? How do they eat?
- Guest Gabriel wants to know about insect blood. Why is it different color from ours?
Bugscope Team Insect blood is not red like ours. Usually it is usually clear in color. The blood of (most) insects does not carry oxygen, and so it is not iron-rich like our blood. The iron in mammal blood is what gives it its red color
- 1:41pm
- Guest And why is this microscope not in color?
- Guest Addie wants to know what we are looking at? These circular things
- Guest We are going to switch to a different group. My 6th period class would like to thank you for letting us see our ant lion up close
- Guest A new group is coming up. Can we stay for a bit longer?
- Bugscope Team yes you can stay a little longer. we will have to lose Annie, though...
- Bugscope Team be sure to check out some of the other presets.
- 1:46pm
- Guest I'll have a new group in 5 minutes
- Bugscope Team cool
- Bugscope Team I am sorry we had so much trouble getting started today -- we tried something we'd never tried before to get the logins to work
- Bugscope Team see the eye now?
- Bugscope Team Annie has to go turn in receipts so she can get reimbursed for an expensive meeting!
- Bugscope Team Thank you Annie!
- 1:53pm
- Guest Thank you! We have a new group here
- Guest They wwant to see the eye. Scot, can you drive us there
- Guest Cameron wants to know what the funny lookin symbol is on the lower left part of teh screen
- Guest Joe wants to know what the flakes are on the jaws?
- Bugscope Team the funny looking symbol is a Greek letter 'mu"
- Bugscope Team the flakes are dried insect blood, we think, called hemolymph
- Bugscope Team the Greek letter mu means 'micro' here
- Bugscope Team the 208 um is a micrometer
- Bugscope Team the eye is right below the blob that resembles an eye
- 1:58pm
- Bugscope Team a micrometer is a millionth of a meter, or a thousandth of a millimeter
- Guest Chris wants to know how many ants a day the ant lion can eat
Bugscope Team Also, Ant lions dont have to eat very many ants to survive, but if given the chance the ant lion would eat as many as he could and as fast as he could...if you had an ant lion in a habitat with 25 ants, that all the ants would be dead in maybe a month or so....but that is just a guess.
- Bugscope Team a bacterium, which we would be able to see if there were any, is two microns long
- Guest Henry wants to know their is a line in the circle of blood?
- Bugscope Team they often eat a small cricket a day in captivity, so they should be able to eat a number of ants, depending on the relative sizes of the ant lion and the ants, of course
- Bugscope Team there may be a crack in the blood droplet
- Guest joe wants to know about the teeth we are looking at...about how many are there?
- Bugscope Team these are spines that help the antlion hold its prey
- Bugscope Team we could try to count them on one of the other antlions
- Bugscope Team there are large and small spines -- they look like teeth, though, don't they
- Bugscope Team see where it says 7 mu m now?
- Guest yes
- 2:03pm
- Bugscope Team the microscope is magnifying the sample about 8500 times.
- Bugscope Team 7 microns is nearly four bacteria long
- Bugscope Team four of the rod-shaped bacillus bacteria end to end
- Bugscope Team now a little better focus
- Guest How far can we zoom in?
- Bugscope Team when we use the electron microscope like this we are limited in resolution because we need to be kind of far from the sample in order to get low mag images as well
- Bugscope Team so often we will not go about 20,000x. the microscope will take meaningful images at 200,000x.
- Bugscope Team you can zoom in a lot, but there is a certain point where you wont be able to see anything. Technically this microscope can be magnified to 900,000 but we never take it above 200,000. With insects we rarely go above 20,000x
- Bugscope Team but as I meant to say, below, that would be at a shorter working distance
- Bugscope Team see the eye now?
- Bugscope Team just past the little antenna
- Bugscope Team yeah!
- Guest Cameron is going to take eyee us to th
- Bugscope Team good job driving!
- Bugscope Team this insect most likely relies more on feel than sight, it uses its special hairs to feel any vibration and movement
- Guest thank you
- Guest Joe wants to know Why are they shaped like that?
- Bugscope Team the eyes?
- 2:08pm
- Guest Neil would like tio know what eats ant lions?
- Bugscope Team they can gather more light, and more information about movement, if they are rounded
- Guest Henry wants to know if that is a pupil?
- Bugscope Team that is a drop of hemolymph, probably, on the simple eye
- Bugscope Team birds are a big bug lover, maybe lizards will eat them as well
- Guest Scot we lost our student hookup. Can you give your control to Cameron?
- Bugscope Team Okay Cameron has it
- Guest Cameron lost the presets..but we will work around it
- Bugscope Team it looks like he has them now... ?
- 2:13pm
- Guest We got it
- Bugscope Team mite!
- Bugscope Team this is a mite on the antenna of an earwig
- Bugscope Team see where it is on the body?
- Guest No, we lost it
- Bugscope Team it is south of here
- Guest Jacob wants to know about that big black hole
- Bugscope Team this is similar to the fluid we saw on the antlion head
- Bugscope Team the hole is where the fluid, of some sort, left an opening
- Bugscope Team it is stuck to that palp
- Bugscope Team a palp is a feeding mouthpart
- Bugscope Team see the compound eye?
- Bugscope Team there is also web on this
- Bugscope Team this was a pretty dirty earwig, it looked a lot worse than this before i put it on the stub
- Guest Scot, can you take us to the mite?
- 2:18pm
- Bugscope Team this is a different mite -- on the leg
- Guest thank you
- Bugscope Team its head is tiny, and it does not have eyes
- Bugscope Team Hey no problem Cameron.
- Bugscope Team when the earwig dies the mites will die as well
- Bugscope Team although it looks like these mites cruised around for awhile after their host died
- Guest Neil wants to know how does it know where it is going without eyes?
- Bugscope Team this is as much of the head as we have ever seen
- Bugscope Team it has lots of feelers to sense its way around the body
- Bugscope Team mites need to be able to get into spots where they won't be rubbed off
- Bugscope Team and we don't know just how they do that
- Bugscope Team ants dont use their eyesight too much, they use their antennae, the same thing is true here
- Guest how many eyes do ants really have or at least an estiment
- Bugscope Team some ants are blind or have very simple eyes
- 2:23pm
- Bugscope Team some have maybe 10 or 12 ommatida per eye, some have many more, comparable to a flying insect
- Guest Scott, the class wants to see the "end" of the insect. We are going to learn about excretory systems soon!
- Guest Can you take us there?
- Bugscope Team and as I said some do not bother to have eyes, but as Cate said they use their antennae quite a bit
- Bugscope Team here are the cerci
- Bugscope Team aka pinchers
- Bugscope Team these are cercopods, or cerci, as Cate says
- Guest Dalton wants to know what the cerci are?
- Guest thank you
- Bugscope Team the cerci are pinchers that the earwig uses to defend itself
- Guest Why does it have pinchers in the back?
- Guest how do ants bite you
- Bugscope Team if you try to pick one up it will try to pinch you with its cerci
- Bugscope Team ants have jaws they can bite you with, and some have stingers as well
- Bugscope Team I am not sure why earwigs have pinching tails, but it works for them
- Guest we are going to look at the ant. Scot? Are these the ants I sent?
- Bugscope Team they are defensive
- Bugscope Team we were not able to put the ants you sent on the stub, but we did look at them
- 2:28pm
- Bugscope Team they did not have wounds we could see; it may be that the antlions were not able to find them
- Guest Can you take us to the ant preset? We re having problems
- Bugscope Team the antlions were not hungry on their trip here, or maybe they did not want to eat dead ants
- Bugscope Team see the jaw?
- Guest thank you!
- Bugscope Team this one is hairy
- Bugscope Team it makes it looks like it has whiskers, which is how these hairs act
- Guest They want to know if you can tell a male from a female ant lion?
- Guest Daniel wants to know if ant lions will eat each other?
- Bugscope Team Sometimes, as Annie said, females are bigger than males in the insect world.
- 2:33pm
- Bugscope Team they are vicious, and we think they would likely eat each other
- Bugscope Team sometimes with insects you cannot tell the difference between the sexes until you cut them open
- Guest Chris wants to know how do ant lions reproduce?
- Bugscope Team when they become adults they are flying insects kind of like dragonflies
- Bugscope Team certainly they lay eggs, but I am not sure where
- Guest what is all the stringy stuff
- Bugscope Team they are likely not asexual, but some insects and other animals can reproduce asexually if they are stressed
- Bugscope Team the stringy stuff is mostly fungus
- Bugscope Team it is funny we have seen this on owlfly larvae as well
- Guest Thank you very much!!! My 2nd group is done and I appreciate what you do for us...see you again next year!
- Bugscope Team owlflies are related to antlions, and the larvae look very similar
- Bugscope Team thank you for all your questions and your great driving
- Bugscope Team antlions are larval insects as well, of course
- Guest My 7th period callas thanks you very much as do I
- Bugscope Team yes Thank you!
- Bugscope Team if you go to your member page http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-104/ you can access chat and images from today
- Bugscope Team Thank you for letting us see antlions for the first time in bugscope!
- 2:39pm
- Guest we will. We are going to write about it for our school paper. I will sned you a copy if you like!
- Guest thank you so much for taking some time out of your day just to answer our questions
- Bugscope Team that would be great, we look forward to it
- Bugscope Team Yeah, Cool. Sounds great!
- Bugscope Team Thank you Cameron.
- Bugscope Team We will look forward to seeing you next year.
