Connected on 2009-01-30 09:15:00 from , WI, US
- 8:48am
- Bugscope Team Hello
- Bugscope Team Setting up presets
- Bugscope Team let me know if you need anything
- 8:55am
- Bugscope Team do you know what the beetle in preset 14 is?
- Bugscope Team not right off hand
- Bugscope Team looks like a carabid
- Bugscope Team but the palps are really weird
- Bugscope Team yeah, it is some sort of ground beetle
- Bugscope Team thanks annie
- 9:00am
- Bugscope Team that's my job :)
- Bugscope Team Hi timmy
- Guest hi
- Bugscope Team do you want to control the microscope for a little bit? Where are you from?
- 9:05am
- Guest great, thank you. i'm from russia
- Bugscope Team Wow are you in Russia now?
- Guest Yes :)
- Bugscope Team This is a wasp compound eye.
- Bugscope Team As soon as our school comes on we will give them control.
- Guest Ok
- 9:10am
- Bugscope Team clicking on a preset will take you to that position on the stage
- Bugscope Team awesome
- Guest thank you, Scot. what is this?
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down lower you can see where you are -- this is a pollen grain
- Bugscope Team lots of pollen looks like this so it is hard to guess what kind it is -- like ragweed
- Bugscope Team it is attached to a seta (which is basically just a hair found on an insect)
- Guest awesome
- Bugscope Team hello trevor, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Sorry timmy we have to have the controls back to the teacher
- Teacher Good morning
- Guest ok, big thanks to all of you!
- Bugscope Team Thanks, Timmy!
- Bugscope Team Trevor Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Please let us know if you have any questions about the insects, or control, or anything else...
- 9:15am
- Teacher Thanks for letting us use Bugscope today!
- Bugscope Team Timmy, our visitor from Russia, had been driving just before you got on. But you have control now.
- Bugscope Team You can drive, center, change contrast/brightness, focus, and choose from among the preset positions we made earlier this morning.
- Teacher What is displayed right now?
- Bugscope Team this is part of the claw of an ambush bug
- Teacher How do we see the insects we sent?
- Bugscope Team the preset was number 11, which you may click on if you wish
- Bugscope Team I am sorry but it looks like we did not get them yet
- Teacher We mailed them in December but we were snowed out of our first viewing.
- Bugscope Team this is the pollen grain, on a seta, on the claw of an ambug bug
- Bugscope Team ambush bug
- Bugscope Team okay, I am sorry, I think we did make that sample up for that day
- Bugscope Team but samples do not last long, besides my having forgotten about it
- 9:20am
- Teacher That's ok. This is interesting too!
- Bugscope Team the tiny pore is a spiracle -- a thoracic spiracle on the dragonfly
- Bugscope Team the head is to the north
- Bugscope Team Cate noted this morning that when they die, they often die with their head/neck twisted at an odd angle
- Bugscope Team this is one of the pores through which the dragonfly breathes
- Teacher How do the students ask a question?
- Bugscope Team insects can close their spiracles if they want to hold their breath
- Bugscope Team it depends on how you are set up there
- Teacher Why would an insect want to hold it's breath?
Bugscope Team Usually insects don't hold their breath. Aquatic insects have developed unusual ways of dealing with the whole problem of breathing underwater
- Bugscope Team often students log on from other computers and can talk to us directly
- Bugscope Team but you can relay questions to us
- Teacher We're using one computer to project to the students. We have a third grade class here.
- Bugscope Team as scot said, it is fine if you just relay the questions to us
- 9:26am
- Bugscope Team the reason I often think of them holding their breath is because we could put one in the microscope live and it could hold its breath until we let it out
- Bugscope Team but we would not do that on purpose -- it would be mean
- Bugscope Team here we are looking at a sort of air filter within the spiracle
- Teacher What are the the branches and holes that we see?
- Bugscope Team a spiracle is like a nose, so just like our noses, they have hairs as well
- Bugscope Team this is where the outside air is collected
- Bugscope Team I think there are usually two spiracles on each body segment
- Bugscope Team this is high mag
- Bugscope Team and a little OOF
- Bugscope Team the micron bar shows you how high the mag might be
- Bugscope Team try driving north!
- Teacher We are trying to switch to preset 7
- Bugscope Team click to stop
- Teacher we tried to stop!
- 9:31am
- Teacher What are we looking at?
- Bugscope Team So because insect blood doesn't carry oxygen, each individual cell needs its own supply of oxygen. Insect spiracles are like nostrils on each segment of the body. The spiracles are connected to tracheae, which are tubes that divide into smaller and smaller tubes, tubes that are eventually so small that they are able to supply molecules of oxygen to each cell in the insect's body
- Bugscope Team now you can see the eyes, and the mouthparts
- Bugscope Team we usually mount samples with the ventral side up so we can see the mouthparts and the limbs
- Teacher Are these goosebumps?
- Bugscope Team yes they are goosebumps, aren't they?
- Bugscope Team this is a more flexible portion of the cuticle
- Teacher What's a cuticle?
Bugscope Team cuticle is just like what your fingernail is made out of
- 9:37am
- Bugscope Team spider!
- Bugscope Team you can see the palps, right in front of where the mouth is
- Teacher Why are the claws curled under?
Bugscope Team A spider has a strange kind of circulatory/"skeletal" system where it can only move when it creates lots of pressure in its body. That is why when you watch a spider move it runs really fast, then it stops for a while, then is runs really fast again. It is regenerating that pressure. When a spider dies, all the pressure is gone, so the legs curl up on themselves.
- Bugscope Team the spider has eight legs and two palps
- Bugscope Team the mouth we cannot see very well, but it has chelicers that are like jaws that move sideways, and fangs attached to them
- Bugscope Team unfortunately we can't see the fangs this morning
- Teacher Do the palps hold on to its food?
Bugscope Team they help to hold/move around the food
- Bugscope Team if a spider is bitten by something poisonous, like another spider, it can sense that and jettison the leg that is bitten before the poison enters the cephalothorax
- Bugscope Team the cephalothorax is the combination head and body -- spiders do not have separate heads
- 9:42am
- Bugscope Team here you can see the edge of one of the fangs -- the smoother thing in the middle, sort of
- Teacher What kind of spider is this?
- Bugscope Team this is a little brown spider from my house -- we don't know just what kind it is
- Bugscope Team not a recluse, though
- Bugscope Team yay the wasp!
- Teacher Can we see the stinger?
Bugscope Team we didnt see a stinger when we were doing the presets, it must be hiding
- Bugscope Team you can see, in a way, that wasps are related to ants
- Bugscope Team Wasps, ants, and bees are all in the insect order Hymenoptera
- Bugscope Team you can see one of the compound eyes, and the jaws, here
- Bugscope Team and you can see more palps!
- 9:47am
- Bugscope Team this is a sort of hinge on the jaw, which opens like a gate
- Teacher It's not driving the the west
- Bugscope Team cool it looks like you just drove over to the beetle
- Bugscope Team the mandibles, these jaws, are like our teeth--they tear and help manipulate food. Wasps also use their mandibles to build their nests
- Bugscope Team it depends on where the cursor is
- Bugscope Team when you click
- Bugscope Team now if you take the mag down a little you will be able to see where you are, perhaps
- Teacher Can you center on the jaws for us?
- Teacher Are these teeth?
Bugscope Team yes, they are very much like a mouthful of teeth
- Teacher Are the indents spiracles?
Bugscope Team You could increase the mag on them, but the spiracles would be a bit bigger than that. Those look like pores from here
- Bugscope Team sometimes the indents you see in cuticles give the appearance to the naked eye of a shiny surface
- 9:52am
- Bugscope Team like shiny black ants will have a cool texture to their cuticle
- Bugscope Team when you drive the microscope, each place you get to -- each image -- is stored in your school's online database. So all of the images you have collected are stored, and you will be able to access them later.
- Bugscope Team whoops the edge of the world :)
- Bugscope Team note that the images are black and white. that is because we are using electrons rather than light to collect the images we see, and the electrons that come back to the detector show up as 'signal,' not light. So the images are in grayscale.y
- Bugscope Team here is a good view of the individual parts of a compound eye
- Bugscope Team And entomologists are not really sure why some insects have cuticles with such unusual textures.
- Bugscope Team the individual parts of the eye are called 'ommatidia'
- Teacher Are each of the squares separate eyes?
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes you would be able to register motion much more quickly than we do
- Bugscope Team each is a separate 'lens'
- 9:58am
- Bugscope Team you can see that there are many hundreds to thousands of individual facets, individual ommatidia
- Bugscope Team there are still some mysteries as to what the compound eye sees, most think that each lens will see a part of the "picture" and relay each part back to the brain where it is put together
- Teacher What are the things on the lenses?
Bugscope Team mostly the stuff on it is "juju" or extra stuff that doesn't belong like dust or dirt, but in the lower part of the image you can see a single seta sticking up inbetween the lens
- Teacher Why does an eye have setae?
Bugscope Team in some insects, the setae found on compound eyes helps the insect detect the wind currents
- Bugscope Team I'm not entirely sure that is the same deal here since it is so short
- Bugscope Team there -- to the right
- Bugscope Team Yeah, this seta is really short--maybe it is for sensing dirt or dust
- Bugscope Team the preset moved a little since it was made
- 10:03am
- Teacher Are the long shapes setae on the beetle?
Bugscope Team yep all those things sticking out are the setae
- Bugscope Team this is a very hairy "bug"
- Bugscope Team when the cuticle, or chitin, has indentations like this, they can make the chitin stronger, and they also may be responsible for the iridescence we sometimes see
- Teacher Do all instects have setae?
Bugscope Team Yes, all insects have setae. The setae allow them to feel, taste, and smell their environment
- Teacher Are the setae in pores?
- Bugscope Team I can't think of an insect we have seen that does not have setae
- Teacher Do all insects have a thorax?
Bugscope Team All insects have head, thorax and abdomen. All insects have six legs and one pair of antennae. Those are the requirements for being an insect!
- Bugscope Team but they are not all in pores
- Bugscope Team setae can also be thermosensory -- the insect can sense temperature with some of them
- Bugscope Team some setae are sensitive only to particular odors
- 10:08am
- Teacher What is the collar shaped part of the beetle that we're looking at?
Bugscope Team Beetles have what is called a prothorax--the little roundish segment between the head and the elytra (aka the beetles hard shell-like wings)
- Bugscope Team There are a few other requirements, but the three body regions and six legs are the most obvious
- Bugscope Team for example the spider did not have a separate head and thorax
- Teacher What about a centipede? Are they insects?
Bugscope Team Nope--too many legs, too many segments
- Bugscope Team The first pair of legs are attached to the prothorax--but not any wings
- Bugscope Team you can see the ball and socket joint in the antenna, actually a couple of them
- Bugscope Team this is cool!
- Bugscope Team yay!
- Teacher Are these setae too?
- Bugscope Team these are special setae that allow the insect to climb on walls
- Bugscope Team they are sticky
- Bugscope Team geckos have similar setae that are much finer, much smaller
- 10:13am
- Teacher What makes it sticky?
- Bugscope Team they act similar to velcro or suction cups
- Teacher Do flys have tastebuds on the bottom of their feet?
Bugscope Team Yes, they have chemosensory setae that allow them to taste what they are standing on
- Bugscope Team in this case it is probably the shape that makes it stick to a smooth surface -- as Cate says they are sort of like suction cups
- Teacher I meant to type flies
- Teacher What do they use their claws for?
- Bugscope Team I am not sure if they are on the bottom of their feet or no--they are on the tarsi for sure
- Bugscope Team the last few segments of the 'arm' are called tarsomeres, or tarsi
- Teacher Our time is up and we have to go. Thank you for the interesting information and bugs!
- Teacher We all had a lot of fun
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team thank you for all your great questions, you did a good job driving as well
- Bugscope Team Thank you all!
- Teacher Thank you
- Teacher Bye
- Bugscope Team bye bye
- 10:18am
- Teacher :)
- Bugscope Team you can access the images and chat from today at anytime by going to yoru member page at http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-122/
- Bugscope Team over and out!
