Connected on 2008-12-01 09:30:00 from , NY, US
- 8:03am
- Bugscope Team pumping the 'scope down; back in a minute
- 8:25am
- 8:34am
- 8:44am
- 8:50am
- 8:58am
- 9:05am
- 9:15am
- Bugscope Team hello we are just about done with presets
- Bugscope Team Good morning!
- Bugscope Team We are ready to roll.
- Bugscope Team You may try driving as soon as you'd like
- Teacher great, my seventh grade students will be here shortly
- Bugscope Team this is the tail end of a caddisfly larva
- Bugscope Team you can see one of the claws, and this is also where they have web spinning glands
- Teacher amazing stuff, considering to collect my samples I had to break the ice on the stream
- Bugscope Team that is dedication
- Bugscope Team You did a great job, and the samples arrived in good shape. I am sorry not to have let you know...
- 9:20am
- Teacher so when the kids arrive we are free to manipulate the images presented
- Bugscope Team you can do it at any time
- Bugscope Team try it out -- select a preset, for example, or take the mag down on this area
- Bugscope Team this is the tail end of one small caddisfly larva
- Bugscope Team it curves like a U to the left
- Teacher what about the string like structures
- Bugscope Team if you click to drive you need to remember to click to stop as well
- Bugscope Team they seem to have those in all samples, and I think they help them secure themselves to the substrate -- to whatever they attach to
- Teacher where's the stop button
- Bugscope Team oh -- you click on the screen with your mouse to start driving and you click on the screen to stop as well
- Bugscope Team same with click to center, but you don'
- Bugscope Team t need to click to stop
- Bugscope Team Hello Mr Jarrett.
- 9:26am
- Bugscope Team Ms Faville you can click on any one of the presets to make the microscope drive itself to that place on the stub
- Bugscope Team You can have the students log in to ask us questions, and we can let them drive, one at a time, if you wish
- Bugscope Team only you have control right now, and you can just keep it if you prefer
- Bugscope Team that's what the star next to your name shows
- Teacher great, I think we will begin the session as a collective group and then possibly divide into groups on alternate computers
- 9:32am
- Bugscope Team Cate and I will be here to help and to answer questions. I am not sure if Annie, our entomologist, will be able to connect this morning.
- Guest Hi everyone, don't mind me, I'm just having fun watching! I'm a K-4 technology teacher in New Jersey. Will be blogging about this site shortly at http://www.ncs-tech.org!
- Bugscope Team Mr Jarrett please let us know when you have questions. Once things get going we will want to make sure we address the students' questions. Every session is a little different.
- Bugscope Team Sometimes they are wild/frenetic, and sometimes they run at a slow, even pace.
- Teacher everyone wanted to see the stonefly mouth first
- Bugscope Team you ca
- Bugscope Team n see the mouth, the antennae, and the eyes
- Bugscope Team the eyes are behind the antennae
- Teacher why does it look like a crack on its head
Bugscope Team i think that is a strand of fiber hanging over it
- 9:37am
- Bugscope Team you can zoom in on it to make sure tho
- Bugscope Team now you can see it a little better
- Bugscope Team a lot of these larva will eat fungi, bacteria, and plant material; others are predators
- Bugscope Team if you get lost you can take the mag down to see where you are
- Teacher the student's wondered by the mouth looks so hairy and dry
- Bugscope Team We think the hairs (setae) at the mouth opening help filter what the stonefly larva is eating
- Bugscope Team Cate said earlier that it reminded her of whales that filter krill into their mouths.
- 9:43am
- Guest how many legs excactly does it have?
- Bugscope Team Now you can get an idea of how the stage is set up. There are samples all over a 1.75-inch-diameter stub.
- Guest why did they name this insect a stone fly
- Bugscope Team It looks like most of these have six legs, aas we would think of them, but numerous other leglike appendages.
- Guest ijksjllels;ekfl
- Guest is a stone fly hard
- Guest do stone flies have compound eyes
- Bugscope Team a stone fly has an exoskeleton, so its outer surface is hard, but not more so than most insects
- Teacher we lost our specimen, any suggestions
- 9:48am
- Bugscope Team click on the preset again
- Bugscope Team or drive to find a new specimen
- Bugscope Team right now we are looking at the carbon tape that we put the insects on
- Bugscope Team let us know if you have any trouble
- Teacher why is it shaped like that?
- Bugscope Team this is the blackfly larva, and I am sorry I do not recognize this structure at all -- at first I thought it might be a spiracle
- Teacher what is your education
- Bugscope Team it also looks like a caterpillar proleg, but it seems to be in the middle of the body
- Teacher and how did you get your jog
- Teacher job
- Bugscope Team I have a degree in biology and english
- Guest where is this inscet located at
- Bugscope Team and I started doing this because I needed something to do while I was finishing my double major
- Bugscope Team i have a degree in physics, i started working here when i was a student and became full time after i graduated
- Teacher you both do bugscope full time?
- Bugscope Team the insect is in the scanning electron microscope at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois
- Bugscope Team no we work in a multi-user facility, bugscope is something we do about 3x a week.
- Bugscope Team when we arent doing bugscope we help users (students from the university) with their projects, help them prepare samples and image them
- Guest what do they eat
- Teacher is this the mouthpart?
- 9:53am
- Bugscope Team blackfly larvae are filter feeders, but I don't think this is a mouthpart
- Teacher what are those strange flame like structures for?
- Bugscope Team but with this particular sample I am not sure if I could tell the head from the tail
- Bugscope Team they resemble crochets, which are tiny hooks that caterpillars have on their prolegs
- Bugscope Team today we are working with samples that we rarely see, and a lot of this is new to us as well
- Guest why is it shape like that
- Bugscope Team this is the underside of the head, at the other end of the body
- Bugscope Team this is the filterfeeding apparatus
- Teacher do they have eyes?
- Guest how do they smell
- Bugscope Team I am not sure if they have eyes on not
- Bugscope Team we could try to look for them if you took the mag down
- Teacher ok
- Bugscope Team they smell, generally, using setae that are specially equipped with chemosensors
- 9:59am
- Bugscope Team because there was only one of these we could not mount it with a ventral and a dorsal view
- Guest wat is a setae
- Guest what
- Bugscope Team setae are what we call the tiny hairlike structures that insects have so many of
- Bugscope Team singular 'seta'
- Guest where do you work
- Bugscope Team here you can get an idea of the scale -- see the micron bar, in the lower left?
- Teacher a student asks...whats that small pill like structure?
Bugscope Team the pill-like structures are diatoms, which are small silica-shelled creatures you find in the water
- Guest where do find them at
- Bugscope Team the hat-shaped one is a diatom too
- Bugscope Team yes -- they come in lots of different shapes
- Guest what are the string like structures
- Teacher are diatoms commonly found in fresh water
- Bugscope Team caddisfly larvae can produce silk, like spiders
- 10:04am
- Guest why do they produce slik
- Teacher why do make slik
Bugscope Team they make cocoon type homes in the water made of rocks and mud. The silk helps hold it together
- Guest silk
- Bugscope Team diatoms are found in both fresh and saltwater
- Teacher What about the spiky structures on the caddis?
- Bugscope Team the caddisfly larvae that do not make cocoons may also use silk to attach themselves to the stream bed
- Bugscope Team when we see spikey structures they may be sensory, and they may also be protective
- Guest what are those things that look like seeds
Bugscope Team i think those are setae
- Teacher what are those structures inside the head?
- 10:09am
- Bugscope Team Hello Korei and Elijah!
- Student hat does it eat
Bugscope Team Different species of caddisfly eat different things. The predator species typically eat other aquatic insects, and have large jaws called mandibles. Herbivorous species eat algae and other plants.
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down you can see where we are with respect to the whole head
- Bugscope Team now you can see more clearly where we are on the head
- Student is tha the mouth
- Student the
- Bugscope Team yes! that is the mouth
- Guest Hey everyone sorrry but I have to go...this was awesome! Just blogged it: http://www.ncs-tech.org/?p=2120
- 10:14am
- Bugscope Team Thank you Mr Jarrett.
- Bugscope Team ok mr jarrett. thank you for joining
- Student bye
- Student mr jarret
- Student what is that black stuff around the quill
- Bugscope Team this is the tail of a caddisfly larva next to the part of the porcupine quill that sticks into the porcupine
- Teacher what are those things that look like legs?
- Bugscope Team the black stuff reminds me of the stuff you see around thge base of a hair that's been plucked out
- Bugscope Team I imagine those are also sort of like prolegs on a caterpillar
- Student what is a thge
- Teacher is the their function?
- Bugscope Team do you want to drive over and see? you could do it
- 10:20am
- Bugscope Team it may be that they serve to help anchor the caddisfly larva in the stream, especially when they have silk stuck to them
- Bugscope Team you can see the tiny hooks
- Teacher is this the variety that constructs a house?
- Bugscope Team yes it is ms. faville
- Bugscope Team so it is likely that those frond-like limbs help the larva attach itself to the house it builds around itself
- Bugscope Team the hydra is -- there!
- Bugscope Team it looks like a vase
- Bugscope Team it is attached at its base, which is to the right
- Student are the hydra parasites
Bugscope Team Hydra are named after the nine-headed sea snake of Greek mythology and are freshwater relatives of corals, sea anemones and jellyfish.
- 10:25am
- Bugscope Team they feed on smaller protozoans that are in the water
- Bugscope Team now you can see where we were -- you can get an idea of the scale of what we were seeing
- Bugscope Team this is one of the limbs of the stonefly larva
- Teacher is it common to find hydras attached to aquatic macroinverts
- Bugscope Team the 21 um scale tells us that we are presently looking at an area about 100 microns wide, or 0.1 mm.
- Student why do the they look like balloons
- Bugscope Team we have never seen them before, and we are not sure they are hydra, which normally have limbs like little trees
- Bugscope Team this is cool
- Teacher did we discover a new species possibly?
- Bugscope Team yes!
- 10:30am
- Bugscope Team I have not been able to find it on the web, yet
- Teacher Jamesus academus
- Bugscope Team they're like little pitcher plants, but we did see one in which the open end of the vase had something sticking out of it.
- Teacher Do you have the capacity to dissect?
- Bugscope Team yeah good name -- genus and species
- Teacher do they have teeth?
Bugscope Team no they have a couple set of jaws, you can see the bigger ones and further in the mouth is a smaller pair
- Bugscope Team we can dissect things on a sort of gross scale
- Bugscope Team whoops its just one set
- Bugscope Team the pair inside the mouth is a set of palps
- Bugscope Team we can also embed whole tiny things in plastic and then section them
- Teacher what is attached to the top of the specimen
- Bugscope Team you can go and look; it appears to be debris from the water
- Bugscope Team pretty
- 10:36am
- Bugscope Team these seem to be modified setae -- frond-like setae
- Student what are the setae
- Student for
- Bugscope Team setae help insects sense what is touching them
- Bugscope Team they are likely sensitive to water flow
- Bugscope Team not sure what these specific setae do. Some do have special functions like tasting/smelling or feeling air movements
- Bugscope Team Cate is right -- we don't always know just what specific setae do.
- Teacher It amazes me how complex these inverts actually are
- Bugscope Team you did a great job collecting and packing them so we could get them in such good shape
- Bugscope Team scot was very excited when we received them last week
- Bugscope Team we are sorry to have so few good answers to your questions --- we see these so infrequently
- Bugscope Team yes very excited
- Teacher thank you so much for your efforts, we truly enjoyed the session!
- Student i have to go
- Student bye scot
- Bugscope Team Thank you, Ms. Faville. See you tomorrow!
- Bugscope Team Thanks Korei and Elijah!
- 10:41am
- Bugscope Team thank you for your great questions
- Teacher good bye!
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Bugscope Team that was an interesting session :)
- Bugscope Team you can access your saved images and chat from today at your page: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-108/
