Connected on 2008-12-16 11:30:00 from , NH, US
- 10:29am
- Bugscope Team Coming down quickly
- 10:35am
- 10:41am
- 10:48am
- 10:55am
- 11:00am
- 11:07am
- 11:20am
- Bugscope Team Good afternoon!
- Teacher Good afternoon
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team hello
- Bugscope Team This is the smaller sample you sent.
- Teacher Thank you. My students will be in shortly. Meanwhile, I want to remind you that because of our recent school closings, I have not had a chance to brief my kids. Give me about 5 minutes to do so.
- Bugscope Team ok no problem
- Bugscope Team Please try drving, if you would like, maybe click to center rather than click to drive, and you may try clicking on a preset, changing mag, whatever you would like.
- Bugscope Team driving..
- Teacher The kids haven't gotten here yet. How many samples do you have from us?
- Bugscope Team we received 2 samples from you and we put some insects on as well
- Teacher Do you have the sample of an actual coral polyp? That might be a good one to start with.
- 11:26am
- Bugscope Team we have preset 13 on the lower right that you can click on to get to
- Bugscope Team Do you recognize this now?
- Teacher This is very cool! Still waiting for my kids to show up. Yes, this is a good magnification to start with.
- Bugscope Team Cliff we often put insects/arthropods on the stub along with samples we are not familiar with, as today.
- Bugscope Team you can see this polyp, and others, and you can see an apparent film on the shaft/stalk portion of this sample
- 11:31am
- Bugscope Team looks like you are able to control the 'scope well. is there much lag time for you, can you tell?
- Teacher Not much lag time. Maybe a few seconds. Is that normal.
- Bugscope Team yeah that is pretty good
- Teacher OK, here come the students. I'll give them a brief intro and then let them ask some questions.
- 11:39am
- Bugscope Team the samples we are looking at -- your samples -- were critical point dried in order to preserve their fine features for scanning electron microscopy
- Bugscope Team if they had air-dried, the softer structures would likely have shrunken and distorted
- 11:44am
- Bugscope Team Cliff, Bruce Fouke is with us for a few minutes, as a guest.
- Teacher There are usually 8 tentacles. Are we looking at finer subdivisions?
- Guest Hi - this is Bruce Fouke from Illinois Geology
- Teacher Hi
- Guest I have to give a final exam shortly, but can maybe chime in for a moment
- Bugscope Team We appreciate it, Bruce.
- Guest What coral species, from where, and is this the infected area of the coral
- Teacher Thhis is a healthy specimen (some type of gorgonian) that I ordered from Carolina biological.
- Bugscope Team There are two samples on the stub that came from the school, and as Cliff says, this is the healthy one.
- 11:49am
- Guest Okay, that helps. It is funny that we do not easily se the 8 pinnate symmetry of the polyps in this area
- Guest Can you zoom out a little to see the whole
- Bugscope Team It looks like there is a biofilm obscuring some of the surface features.
- Guest Great!
- Teacher Let me switch to the infected coral.
- Guest Okay
- Teacher This is a piece of the infected coral. The star shaped structures are everywhere when we look with a light microscope. We have no idea what they are. Any clues?
- Guest These star-like clusters features are spicules, which are naturally embedded in the gorgonian tissue to increase the stiffness (i.e. elestic modulus) when the gorgonian is exposed to wave energey
- Bugscope Team wow, cool -- they're spicules!
- Guest The most common infection for aquaria and open ocean specimens is Aspergillus, a fungus
- 11:54am
- Teacher The specimen was taken off a large piece of boulder coral. It appeared to be completely smothering the boulder coral and felt like a tough leathery substance.
- Guest This looks like a mixed fungal and microbial biofilm infection. Your description fits with that well.
- Bugscope Team so the spicules are CaCO3?
- Teacher Interesting?
- Guest not having seen the original specimen, hypothese as follows:
- Bugscope Team I remember reading about spicules but didn't realize they were sometimes external
- Guest Gorgonians have CaCO3 spicules
- Guest Sponges have SiO2 spicules
- Bugscope Team Cool, sorry should let you talk...
- Guest A quick EDAX zap by Scott would show mineralogy, and from there we would know
- Teacher Bruce, Have you seen the original underwater photo that I sent a few weeks ago?
- Guest gorgo spicules and sponge spicules come right up to the very surface
- Bugscope Team We are at a long working distance and will have to do EDAX postsession.
- Teacher Do you suggest that it's a sponge covering the coral?
- Guest cliff - no, how can I see this - okay on the EDAX
- Guest the shot we are now seeing is not a boulder (massive) coral tissue
- 11:59am
- Teacher The original photos were sent in JPG format. I can send you a copy later.
- Teacher Right, but it was growing on top of the coral.
- Guest okay - my email is fouke@illinois.edu I can look now if you send the ASAP
- Bugscope Team Carly, from Bruce's lab, has the images, and I can resend them. Bruce won't be able to stay with us long.
- Teacher Student wants to know- what is EDAX?
Bugscope Team its where we use a detector to find out the composition of a sample using x-rays emitted
- Guest Sorry all - I have got to boogie to give my final exam to 162 students in my GEOL 143 History of Life course here at Illinois
- Bugscope Team yes, EDAX is a commercial brand of Energy-Dispersive X-ray Analysis
- Guest Quick summary -
- Teacher Thanks for your input bruce.
- Guest 1. this shot is not of coral tissue
- Guest 2. those are large spicules and their shape suggests they are CaCO3
- Guest 3. area in between looks like dessicated gorgo or sponge tissue
- Teacher Let me magnify it more.
- Guest 4. the first shots you showed looked like gorgos, but we were missing the 8 pinnate symmetry as well as the well defined polyps with their tentacles
- 12:04pm
- Guest 5. enlargement of spicules sure look like CaCO3 (be aware some sponges also have CaCO3 spicules)
- Guest Ciao a presto - bellisimo!!!!!!!!!!!! Nice work Scott and Cliff
- Bugscope Team Bruce Thank You!
- Teacher Thank you very much.
- Guest Prego prego ..... my pleasure
- Teacher Does anyone know if this could be some kind of invasive sponge? Some specimens do tend to grow over coral.
- Bugscope Team Cliff we are lucky we caught Bruce -- I just called him in his office.
- Bugscope Team It does look like an invasive sponge, doesn't it?
- Bugscope Team The best we can do today is cruise around and document it. All of the images you get will be saved to your school's database.
- Bugscope Team it is very interesting and surprising to me that spicules are external, like this.
- Teacher I agree. I want to switch images now to give the kids a chance to see some insects for comparison.
- 12:10pm
- Bugscope Team As Bruce suggested, after this session Cate and I can collect x-rays from the sample and perhaps determine whether we're seeing CaCO3 or SiO2.
- Bugscope Team But Bruce is right about the shapes of the spicules resembling CaCO3
- Bugscope Team this is on the surface of the gorgonian coral from CBS.
- Bugscope Team rather than the aster (star) shaped spicules we see lots of spheroidal clumps of juju
- Teacher no view of polyps. Is this biofilm? What is juju?
- Teacher After the session, will I be able to change views to see the other presets?
- Bugscope Team this looks like a biofilm -- you can see strands of filmy material stretching across the sample
- Bugscope Team yes you can do that at any time
- Bugscope Team they are all on the same specimen stub
- Bugscope Team yes as Cate said you can go to other presets now
- Bugscope Team juju is what we call unrecognizable debris on our samples
- 12:15pm
- Teacher OK, I see a lot of juju. Student question-- Can you describe what you mean by "biofilm"?
- Bugscope Team Cliff you can scroll through the preset selection to the right of this chat box to see the insects
- Bugscope Team this is the scorpionfly, it has a long snout as you can see
- Bugscope Team A biofilm is a protective environment -- a filmy gel -- that is formed, for example, by bacteria.
- Teacher thanks
- Bugscope Team they are called scorpionflies because it has a tail like a scorpion, but we cant see that feature very wellt oday
- Bugscope Team it also has claws like a spider, which is cool
- Bugscope Team Some bacteria, not all of them, form a bioflim that they can live within. And it keeps them from getting dried out, also protects them from getting washed away by detergents. So sometimes biofilms are bad -- for example Shigella (bad E.coli) may form biofilms on vegetables.
- Bugscope Team this is a fly compound eye. compound meaning it is made up of many facets called ommatidia (which are the hexagons)
- Teacher are those circles bacteria?
- Bugscope Team the small little balls in between are brochosomes, which is something we only find on leafhoppers
- Teacher what do they do?
Bugscope Team the leafhopper use the brochosomes to coat the eggs with a protective layering, so they dont dry out
- Bugscope Team the spike coming up in between is an insect hair we call a seta (pl. is setae)
- 12:21pm
- Bugscope Team you can see, from the micron bar, the relative sizes of the features you are imaging
- Bugscope Team so we liked this image because it's not often we see brochosomes on a fly
- Bugscope Team bacilli -- the rod-shaped bacteria -- are often about 2 microns (micrometers) long
- Bugscope Team here is a small colony of mites on an earwig's body
- Bugscope Team these are mites on an earwig. they arent very good looking because they have some sort of juju plastered on them
- Bugscope Team earwigs are those pincher bugs
- Bugscope Team now you can see that they are close to 0.25 mm long
- Bugscope Team Cate found another species of mites on the borer this morning, and those have eyes -- these do not.
- Teacher are these mites parasitic or commensal?
- Bugscope Team they are probably commensal, but i am not sure. We know that they do apparently die with the host
- Bugscope Team We don't know much about the mites; they are not well studied.
- 12:26pm
- Bugscope Team you can see the little dude in back has two eyes, close-set.
- Teacher Very good
- Bugscope Team For us it is fascinating to find such things. And it is humbling; we realize that there is so much to know about this realm that we get to peek into.
- Teacher student question- what keeps mite populations under contro?
Bugscope Team well im sure if there got to be a lot of mites, any insect bigger than it would be able to it. The mites on insects usually hang out in places where the insect is unable to get to it to get it off
- Teacher what type of borer is this?
Bugscope Team We think the borer may be in the family Bostrichidae, which includes auger beetles and powderpost beetles.
- 12:31pm
- Bugscope Team I think it is an ironclad beetle
- Bugscope Team Help I'm a rock!
- Teacher Was this from my original sample?
- Bugscope Team yes we found this on the smaller sample
- 12:36pm
- Teacher Strange shape to it. Any clue to what mineral it might be?
- Bugscope Team some of these things we may be able to do elemental analysis upon after the session
- Teacher Will someone be able to email me the EDAX results?
- Teacher Will someone forward the other pictures to Bruce. I would love to follow up on this.
- Bugscope Team when we beam electrons at a sample, as we are today, we get x-rays back, regardless of whether we collect them or not
- Bugscope Team we are protected from the x-rays by the heavy metal chamber the samples are in
- Bugscope Team our EDS (energy-dispersive spectroscopy, or EDAX) detector lets us collect x-rays, which have different energies depending upon what elements they come from
- Teacher Are the specimens coated with anything first?
Bugscope Team we coat our regular samples with a gold-palladium alloy to help make the samples conductive
- Bugscope Team so we can try doing some of this after the session
- Teacher Sounds good. Thank you so much for helping us out. Let me know if you want to join our next dive expedition to Belize!
- 12:42pm
- Bugscope Team that sounds like a deal
- Teacher Does this make it an expensive procedure?
- Teacher OK,
- Bugscope Team we do bugscope for free, we get grant money for that
- Teacher Right, but does it still cost a lot to coat the specimens?
Bugscope Team oh since it's coated with Au/Pl you would think it is expensive. The targets we use to coat the samples with are expensive. The targets are round thin disks around 2 1/2-3 inches in diameter. But we charge people who use it a small amount because we get so many people who need to coat their samples and the target lasts for a long time
- Bugscope Team but we do run a multiuser lab facility and for other people, using EDAX is the same fee as using the microscope
- Teacher The students have to get going now. How do we follow up on the session?
- 12:49pm
- Bugscope Team you have a page that you will be able to access after the session
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-113
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-113
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-113
- Bugscope Team and in the meantime we will try, when you're done, collecting some x-ray data
- Bugscope Team we should be able to send you spectra via email
- Teacher Great, thanks again.
