Connected on 2009-02-04 11:00:00 from , WI, US
- 10:27am
- Bugscope Team hello be@ver, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team we are setting up presets right now, we'll be done in 10-15 minutes
- Teacher I am trying to get this set up while my 5th graders are at recess
- Bugscope Team cool, do you have any questions? can i help?
- 10:35am
- Student hi
- Bugscope Team hi sea, welcome to bugscope!
- Student how old was the praying mantis when he died
- Student are u ready yet
- Student or in about 15 minutes
- Student How old was the mantis when he died
- Bugscope Team well, we don't know for sure other than it was an adult, and mantis live 3-12 months or so? so i'm guessing he's 3-6 months old
- Bugscope Team we are still setting up presets, we'll be ready at 11AM central, or soon before
- Bugscope Team We can only guess how old the praying mantis is. I think Alex is correct.
- 10:40am
- Bugscope Team Weevil.
- Student this is an electron microscpe right
- Bugscope Team sea we are making the presets for your session, and we are nearly done. after they're done we can turn control over to you.
- Bugscope Team yep, a scanning environmental electron microscope
- Bugscope Team This is a scanning eletron microscope.
- Student cool
- Bugscope Team sue, are we ready to go? we are done with presets, and i just unlocked the session, so you should have control now
- Student well be ready in 5 min.
- Bugscope Team ok
- Bugscope Team the other presets for what you sent are near the bottom of the preset list
- Bugscope Team we included a few insects of our own as well
- Student awesome
- Bugscope Team Alright you all have control of the 'scope now, as soon as you want, and please let us know when you have questions.
- Bugscope Team Hello Drew, Alexandria, and Matthew
- 10:45am
- Student hi!
- Student did the egg sack have any baby mantis in it
Bugscope Team we saw eggs in it, but nothing that was hatched
- Bugscope Team And sea ;)
- Student Did the mantis die because of old age? or because of something else?
Bugscope Team i think most mantis die because of pressures in the environment: predators, people, storms, etc...
- Student What insects do you give
- Bugscope Team likely it died of old age
- Student was the egg sack fertilized
- Bugscope Team it is hard to tell whether the eggs were fertilized
- Student why
- Student how many eggs were in it
- Bugscope Team we added on a weevil, as you probably saw, a beetle, some sort of fly, a water beetle, and a parasitic wasp
- Student Did she die at a young age for a mantis?
- Bugscope Team it is possible they were not, since we did not see evidence of development
- Bugscope Team some eggs were better formed than others
- Bugscope Team opps, scott knows better than me, so yeah, this mantis probably died of old age...
- Student are u putting up the pictures of the egg sacks
- Student could the eggs still hatch if they were or were to be fertilized?
- Student what is a weevil
- Bugscope Team sea, we are done with presets now, so your teacher can move the scope to anything you like now
- Student cool
- Bugscope Team A
- Student what is the biggest thing that the mantis could eat if she were still alive?
- Bugscope Team a weevil is a small insect that often eats grains
- Bugscope Team weevils have long snouts like an anteater
- Bugscope Team I don't believe the eggs would hatch if they were not fertilized.
- Student the egg is awesome
- 10:50am
- Bugscope Team there is another egg in a little nitch to the left of it as well
- Bugscope Team the eggs looked like small grains of rice
- Bugscope Team I believe that mantids typically only deposit egg cases with fertilized eggs. There are lots of eggs in a egg case, and some are inevitably misformed, unfertilized etc. It is possible that the egg case dried out, or became infected with a fungus or virus. Or it is possible that the eggs were "resting" and would resume development in the spring.
- Bugscope Team some mantises are large enough to eat small birds
- Bugscope Team So--some of the eggs were fertilized for sure. Some eggs were also probably duds.
- Bugscope Team you can change the mag on the microscope to see where you are
- Bugscope Team and you can drive around; these are not just images, they are live views of what is in the microscope
- Student could she live off of plants?
Bugscope Team No, mantids are strictly predators
- Student what would of been the size of the baby mantises if they would of hatched
Bugscope Team They are really small when they first hatch--smaller than a staple
- Bugscope Team the samples are coated with gold-palladium to make them conductive, but even without a conductive coat the images we see would be grey scale -- black and white
- Student do you think the mantises was in good shape
- Student was there a chance that the mantis eggs could hatch
- Bugscope Team Jonah we still have part of the egg sac, so Cate could come in one day and find baby mantises in her office
- Student Do you think any eggs will ever hatch?
Bugscope Team not anymore--I think these are gonners
- Bugscope Team they look just like adults but are small and do not have wings
- Student our mantis laid its eggs one mounth before it died
- Bugscope Team The eggs that are in the scope anyway
- Student what do the baby mantises eat
Bugscope Team They eat leafhoppers, aphids and small flies.
- Student what would you do with them if they hatch
Bugscope Team we would probably set them to roam outside in the wild
- 10:55am
- Student What is the crystal on the eggsack?
Bugscope Team Katelynn when we are done with the session we will use the elemental analysis feature of the microscope to see if we can figure out what the crystals are made of. It was a surprise to us to find them.
- Student what did it get moldsports from
Bugscope Team Amie mold often shows up soon after something dies, and it seems to occur more frequently in damp environments or enclosed spaces.
- Student was the mantiese in good shape
- Student how would
- Student Could the crystals be water crystals?
Bugscope Team Katelynn if we saw water crystals they would be in the form of ice. These are apparently cubic crystals, and that tells us they could be salt, like sodium chloride.
- Student how would you raise a baby mantis
Bugscope Team We would try to find it small things to eat, perhaps aphids, and we would light its enclosure to keep it warm.
- 11:01am
- Student what weather would the mantis best live in?
Bugscope Team Mantids are only around after the last frost. The cold kills the adults. They overwinter as eggs in the egg cases
- Student How long does it take for baby mantises to hatch
- Student how many boys and how many girls would there have been
Bugscope Team The approximate sex ration is 1:1 for most insects. So, while we don't know exactly how many there would have been, we can assume half would be girls and half would be boys
- Student Do any insects eat mantises
Bugscope Team Predatory insects will ususally eat anything that is smaller than them. So, many insects and non-insect arthropods, like spiders, would be happy to eat a baby mantis
- Student what substace was the sack made out of
Bugscope Team Jonah it is some kind of protein that comes from the female mantis and hardens after it is extruded.
- Student how big can a mantis get
Bugscope Team The largest ones are about 4-5 inches long
- Student how many bones can a mantis get
Bugscope Team they don't exactly have bones like us. They have their protective outer shell-- an exoskeleton and then all their organs and vessels are inside that
- Student How many babies would survie after?
- Student what is the wing span of a mantis
Bugscope Team A large female can have a wingspan of about 7 inches
- Student how can you tell the gender of a mantis
Bugscope Team You can't really tell until they are full-grown. The males are small and thin, the females are much larger and are very fat.
- Student do the babies really eat each other if they don't get food
Bugscope Team yes
- 11:06am
- Student When is their mating season
Bugscope Team The end of the summer--like late July-August
- Student Do Males and Females eat the same amount
Bugscope Team Umm, I would think that females would eat more, but I am not sure if that is backed up by any scientific evidence
- Student is it true that the females eat the males after mating
Bugscope Team If she is hungry
Bugscope Team yes, that is true, after mating, the female will sometimes eat the males head
- Bugscope Team I have seen some information that has said the females are more likely to eat the males when they are in captivity only, because the male can't get away so easily
- Student do they make homes
Bugscope Team When I lived in Okinawa there were praying mantises that lived on the outside of the house, on the windowsill, for example. They watched us come and go.
- Bugscope Team but yes, the female will try to eat the male usually
- Bugscope Team but in general mantises are cannibalistic, and very aggressive towards each other
- Student does it matter how long it lives if it is in the wild or in a school
Bugscope Team generally, insects will live longer in captivity. There are cases of praying mantises living multiple years in captivity. Insects are more quick to die because there's just so many things that could eat them
- Teacher how much did the mantis weigh
Bugscope Team we didn't weigh it I'm sorry
- Student do mantises fertilize the same as humans da
Bugscope Team Yes, insect reproduction is more or less the same as insects with a few minor differences
Bugscope Team My answer should have read insects are the same as humans...sorry for the typo
- Student do they ever eat to much and die
Bugscope Team No, insects have a very sophisticated hormonal systems that allows them to sense when they have had enough to eat. It is very similar to humans, actually...there are stretch receptors in the gut which send signals to the brain telling the insect that it is full.
- 11:11am
- Student we had two mantises one had green on it's head was that a male or a female?
Bugscope Team Generally the major difference between the female and male mantis is that females usually have heavier abdomen and are larger than males.
- Teacher would the male eat the babies
Bugscope Team Mantids do not provide any parental care. The males and the females mate, leave the eggs, and go on their merry way
- Teacher how far can a mantis see
Bugscope Team That is a good question. They seem to be able to see very well within a few to several feet, but it is hard to say how far they see compared to people or birds, for example.
- Student do mantises ever eat mammals
Bugscope Team Maybe, a large one could eat a baby mouse or a bird. I don't know if mammals comprise a large part of a mantis's diet. It seems unlikely.
- Student how high can they fly
- Bugscope Team the mantis probably weighed just a few grams
- Student how much do mantises drink
- Student are the males more mean than femails
Bugscope Team No, I would say they are equal.
- Teacher do they have hearts
Bugscope Team Yes, insects have hearts at the top of their bodies
- Student is the eggsack soft or hard
Bugscope Team It is like a hard foam--like a meringue cookie
- Student we fead ours lots of crickets
- Student i am looking at the mantisise egg sac how small is it
- Student what colors can mantises be
Bugscope Team they blend in real well to plant surroundings, so they are green, brown and other plant colors
- 11:16am
- Student do the the femailes eat the babies
Bugscope Team praying mantises will eat just about everything that is smaller than it. So if the young ones hatched and the female went up to them and she was hungry, then I guess she would eat them then
- Student do they have organs and if they do what types
Bugscope Team Insects like mantids have more or less the same organs as humans---brains, hearts, guts, a nerve cord. They don't have lungs like we have do, they have tracheal respiration, so their lungs are throughout their bodies.
- Bugscope Team Some mantids are beautiful--pink, bright red, blue. Some are adapted to blend in with flowers.
Bugscope Team yeah, cool, here's a pic of a really beautiful mantis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mantis_wynaad.jpg
- Student can a male fertalize the eggs more than once?
Bugscope Team yes
- Teacher how big is its brain
- Bugscope Team the preset may have moved, you could try to take the magnification down to see where we are
- Student are mantises intelligant
Bugscope Team Not so intelligent....they are similar in intelligence to roaches.
- Teacher what diseases can it get
- Student what shapes can praying mantises be
- Student was it normal that our mantis layied 2 eggsacs
Bugscope Team Very normal...I would say that a female could lay 6 or 7 egg sacs in a summer. It would depend upon the weather, the nutritional state of the insect, etc.
- Student how long was our mantis?
- Student i once saw a mantice at mcdonlds in agust is this rare
Bugscope Team If the mantis was ordering food at McDonalds, that is quite rare. But if it was outside it would be fairly common.
- Student can praying mantises mate with other bugs
Bugscope Team they cannot mate successfully with other insects, and they are more likely to attack than to try to mate with them
- Student how many eggsac can a mantis lay at the most
- 11:21am
- Teacher how big is a weevil
Bugscope Team Weevils range in size from almost microscopic to pretty large--a couple of inches long.
- Student ours laied 3 eggsacs in the three months we had her
Bugscope Team Wow Jacob it sounds like you took very good care of it.
- Student how long does it take for a mantis to lay a eggsack
- Bugscope Team this one today is very small
- Bugscope Team see the compound eye? it is streamlined into the body below the snout
- Student in what part of the worlds do mantiseses come from
Bugscope Team I think you can pretty much find them anywhere that has enough vegetation (no deserts)
- Bugscope Team the two things that look like legs are its antennae
- Student Can a mantis throw up?
Bugscope Team yes. Some of the most famous experiments demonstrating the toxicity of monarch butterflies were conducted using mantises.
- Student do mantises live longer in warm weather
Bugscope Team Katelynn in warm weather mantises have one less factor -- the cold -- that could kill them. So they may live longer in warm weather.
- Student yeah we fead her crickets every day
- Student we feed our mantiseses crickes and grasshoppers every day
- Teacher can mantises get viruses
Bugscope Team Yes, just like humans and dogs and fish, there are a whole host of viruses and other pathogens that infect mantids and other insects.
- Student how big can an eggsac get?
Bugscope Team Allyssa the size of the egg sac depends in part on the size of the mantis and then also how well she has been eating. They can easily get to be half the length of your finger as as thick.
- Student how far can mantiseses fly
- Bugscope Team and the weather has to be warm enough as well, no freezing temperatures
- 11:27am
- Teacher We also have a gartar snake. Is there anything we could send that you that we could look at under the microscope?
Bugscope Team I think in the past we have looked at snake skin, but it wasn't very interesting. So probably not, sadly
- Bugscope Team I should have said, regarding the size of the egg sac, at least half the length of your finger and as thick as your finger.
- Teacher Can a human get sick from Mantis?
Bugscope Team a mantis has no venom, so no it can't hurt us
- Bugscope Team with the garter snake, we could image the shed skin, and sometimes teeth if they come off
- Teacher Does a mantis sleep like we do?
Bugscope Team They'll stop moving and "rest" for a period of time, but it's not really like a human sleeps.
- 11:32am
- Bugscope Team Be sure and change the mag when you get to a place, look around if you would like
- Bugscope Team this is a place where we had made a preset but the sample moved afterwards
- Bugscope Team so if you take the mag down one click you can likelys see where you are
- Bugscope Team Cool!
- Bugscope Team this is the grasping part of the arm -- the part that grips the prey
- 11:38am
- Bugscope Team ok, closing the session, nice one everyone!
- Bugscope Team bye bye
