Connected on 2009-04-28 10:00:00 from , MA, US
- 9:53am
- Bugscope Team nice-looking pollen grains
- 10:00am
- 10:06am
- Bugscope Team hello, welcome to bugscope!
- 10:13am
- Bugscope Team Good morning! We are done with the presets and ready for you to take over as soon as you wish.
- Bugscope Team Presently K_Computer has control of the microscope.
- Teacher Great! I am waiting for my students to join me...
- Bugscope Team you may try driving if you wish
- Bugscope Team yay
- Bugscope Team scales
- 10:20am
- Teacher Do the other computers display what the driver is displaying?
Bugscope Team yep
- Teacher They are not at this moment
Bugscope Team try hitting refresh (F5), sometimes the sync gets out of wack
- Bugscope Team the only difference is only one person can see the controls at one time, we can switch controls to any student/guest logged in
- Teacher O.K. now they are all in sync
- Bugscope Team yay
- Bugscope Team cool :)
- Bugscope Team this is one of the multiple spiracles we saw on the centipede you sent
- 10:29am
- Teacher The students are here now!
- Bugscope Team yay, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Cool! Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team we weren't sure what this is -- it looks like a grasshopper
- Teacher we thought it was a cricket
- Bugscope Team Please feel free to ask us questions about what you see.
- Bugscope Team There's one of its serrated jaws.
- Bugscope Team good for cutting
- Bugscope Team you can change the mag, drive around to see other stuff we didn't already highlight for you
- Teacher are thet teeth?
- Bugscope Team they are as close to teeth as insects come
- 10:34am
- Bugscope Team those are the edges of the jaw, which opens sideways, like a gate
- Bugscope Team here is the centipede you sent us
- Bugscope Team insects and many other arthropods have an exoskeleton -- their skeleton is on the outside
- Bugscope Team and they don't really have teeth, although sometimes the jaws are hardened
- Bugscope Team Centipedes and millipedes are not actually insects. They are in a different subphylum
- Bugscope Team the exoskeleton is made of chitin, which is sort of like what your fingernails are made of
- Bugscope Team or think about the shell of a shrimp -- that is chitin
- Teacher Tom wants to know if it has hair, and if those are eyes
Bugscope Team well, it's not really hair. those hair looking things are called setae (see-tee). setae help the insects to sense their environment, some setae are chemosensory, others are mechanosensory - setae help insects feel, smell, and interact with their enviornment
- Bugscope Team here is where the centipede's mouth is
- Bugscope Team the eyes are on the side of the head, and kind of hard to see now
- Bugscope Team you can see the antennae, though
- Bugscope Team the eyes are streamlined into the shape of the head
- 10:40am
- Teacher how many legs does a centipede really have
Bugscope Team it depends upon the species...some have around 50, some have more or less.
- Teacher What is a spiracle?
Bugscope Team a spiracle is a breathing hole, usually found on the abdomen of an insect. insects don't breath through their mouths like people do, instead they have these spiracles on their bodies, and air goes in the spiracle and feeds the insect with needed elements, like nitrogen and oxygen
- Bugscope Team this is actually a millipede, because it has more than one set of legs per body segment.
- Bugscope Team spiracles are a lot like our noses, they even have little hairs in them like nose hairs
- Bugscope Team the hairs help keep unwanted particles from getting in
- Teacher Does a millipede have sharp claws?
Bugscope Team They wouldn't feel sharp if they crawled across you...they would mostly tickle. The points are too small for us to feel
- Bugscope Team yes take a look!
- Bugscope Team you can see that they are sharp and pointy
- Bugscope Team if you use click to center you can zero in one on of the claws
- 10:45am
- Teacher My center box is just a black square
Bugscope Team try refreshing the browser
- Bugscope Team F5, refresh
- Bugscope Team do you have an image now?
- Bugscope Team sometimes your browser doesn't update, and so it'll be black. if you click on F5 (refresh), that should always fix it.
- Bugscope Team there's one of the claws -- good job!
- Bugscope Team nice...
- Bugscope Team you can use click to center again to center the image
- Bugscope Team you are driving a $600,000 microscope from your classroom
- Bugscope Team if you get disoriented you can take the mag down a little
- Bugscope Team if you get lost driving, try clicking on a preset if you want
- Bugscope Team the samples are all in a vacuum chamber, they are coated with a very fine layer of gold-palladium, and we are beaming electrons at them
- Guest Roman would like to know if an ant can feel how sharp the claws are.
Bugscope Team yes an ant is small enough to appreciate how sharp the claws are
- Bugscope Team the images we see are the 'secondary' electrons coming back from the sample coating
- 10:50am
- Bugscope Team many arthropods have defensive chemicals or behaviors that help them avoid ants
- Teacher What is a beetle palp?
Bugscope Team they are found around the mouth and help the beetle taste/manipulate its food
- Bugscope Team this is one of the palps of a beetle you sent
- Bugscope Team see the mandibles (jaws)?
- Bugscope Team now you can also see on of the compound eyes
- Teacher Yes!
- Bugscope Team to the left
- Bugscope Team and you can see the base of one of the antennae
- Guest Tom asks, "What do beetles eat?"
Bugscope Team There are so many different beetles--they eat everything. They eat other insects, they eat dead insects and dead animal parts, they eat plants, they eat fruit, they eat old oatmeal, they eat wood, sticky candy---anything at all, you can bet there is a beetle that eats it!
- 10:55am
- Teacher Aaron wants to know what is around the bug?
Bugscope Team we have all the insects sitting on double stick carbon tape (it looks like it has bubbles) and then we also put a little dab of silver paint between the insect and the tape to help ground the sample (it looks like the smoother stuff in the background)
- Bugscope Team notice that we mount most 'bugs' on their backs, so the ventral side is up, dorsal side down
- Bugscope Team the ventral side is usually more interesting
- Bugscope Team here you can see the eye much better
- Bugscope Team to the left
- Guest Tom asks, "Does a beetle have a big brain or a little brain compared to other bugs?"
Bugscope Team They have very average sized brains. Most insects have the same general brain structure, what varies is the size of the parts of the brain that do different tasks. For example, a beetle that lives in dirt has a much smaller part of its brain that handles sight as compared to a bee or a fly with big eyes that needs to see where it is going as it is flying around. The beetle doesn't need to see because it lives in the dark in the dirt.
- Bugscope Team that is the end of the stage, you can even see the screw in the background
- 11:00am
- Bugscope Team nice driving mrs. Correira, you are doing a great job
- Guest curtis wants to know what it feels like
- Bugscope Team fruit fly brains are proportionately larger, for example, and much of the brain is devoted to processing visual signals -- to seeing
- Teacher Are these sensors, too?
- Bugscope Team that is a pulvillus pad on the claw that has tenent setae on it, which are used to allow the insect to walk on walls
- Bugscope Team this is a Nitidulid--a sap beetle
- Bugscope Team this is the beetle you sent us
- Bugscope Team The antennae give it away
- Bugscope Team yes we can tell that unlike many other beetles, this one has the ability to cling to vertical surfaces
- 11:05am
- Guest sam s. wants to know how many hairs it has
Bugscope Team often there are too many hairs (setae) to count
- Teacher we could not ID this bug
- Bugscope Team a lot of insects, if you watch them walk, do not support themselves on their claws, but lower down on the tarsi, which is what the last several segments of the arm or leg are called
- Bugscope Team Longhorned beetle!!!!
- Bugscope Team Hooray!!!!
- Bugscope Team this is one we slipped in on you -- Annie brought it back from camping this weekend
- Bugscope Team see the pollen grains?
- Teacher we have had great devistation arond here from this critter!
- Bugscope Team Annie's thesis was/is on longhorned beetles.
- Bugscope Team those hairs (setae) stick through the exoskeleton, to nerves underneath, and that's how information is passed to the insects. if they didn't have those hairs, they wouldn't feel much of anything. the exoskeleton has no nerves, can't feel a thing
- Bugscope Team This is Molorchus bimaculatus--it doesn't have a common name. I collected it this weekend from a flowering tree.
- Guest zack wants to know what color markings it has on its back
Bugscope Team This beetle is dark brown and has lighted brown marks on its back
- Guest Tom wants to know, "Can a beetle eat a praying mantis that is still alive?"
Bugscope Team I am not sure if there are any beetles than are large enough to eat a living praying mantis. Not a full grown praying mantis anyway
- Guest Roman would like to know where you found the longhorned beetle.
Bugscope Team I collected this beetle at Forest Glen park near Danville, IL this weekend
- Bugscope Team This beetle mimics another beetle...a beetle that is gross for most animal to eat
- Teacher You can see why it is a longhorn!
- 11:10am
- Bugscope Team ha beat me to it
- Bugscope Team It was feeding on pollen from a very smelly flowering tree
- Bugscope Team this is one of the claws of a dog tick
- Bugscope Team that is disquieting
- Guest Tom says, "what is that round thing?"
- Bugscope Team we don't know what the round thing is but assume it helps the tick cling to its prey
- Bugscope Team yay!
- Bugscope Team this is kind of cool, and we haven't seen pads like this before, on a tick, that I recall
- Bugscope Team This is an American dog tick, Dermacentor varabilis
- Teacher Good, we got it from a dog...
- 11:15am
- Bugscope Team I also collected this tick this weekend
- Bugscope Team well, one like it
- Teacher Zack asks if this is hard tick
Bugscope Team Yup
- Bugscope Team we rarely see soft ticks
- Teacher Are deer ticks hard ticks too?
Bugscope Team Yes, deer tick, Ixodes species, are also hard ticks
- Guest Roman asks, "How do ticks communicate?"
Bugscope Team There is not much known about tick communication....very very very little actually. They probably locate each other by smell, like many arthropods do
- Teacher What are examples of soft ticks--are they in New England
- Guest Tom would like to know what ticks use to suck blood.
- Guest curtis wants to know where its eyes are
Bugscope Team it doesn't have eyes; where the eyes would be, you'd think, there are little pits that we think are heat-sensory
- Guest conor wants to know how big a hole they make on their victims
Bugscope Team They make a relatively small hole. A tick bite often gets infected, which results in a larger wound than would just be the case if there was just a simple bite.
- 11:21am
- Bugscope Team Well, the brown dog tick, which is a type of soft tick is common in Illinois. Many soft ticks also feed on reptiles and amphibians.
- Bugscope Team when the tick bites the two pieces on either side of the head fold down
- Bugscope Team right now we are looking at on the left, part of the capitulum which sticks into your skin
- Bugscope Team the part on the right folds down
- Bugscope Team you could see those sharp recurved spines on the capitulum; on the opposite side was a rasp like surface that scrapes the hole
- Bugscope Team Oops, I was wrong about the brown dog tick...it is a hard tick too!
- Guest The boys are asking about Lyme disease. Are there other diseases you can get from deer ticks and how dangerous are they?
Bugscope Team Ticks can vector a number of diseases. Other than Lyme disease, the most common tick borne disease is Rock Mountain spotted fever. Ticks can also vector other bacterial diseases such as borellia, tuleremia, etc. These diseases are typically more serious for domestic animals, like cows and rabbits and deer.
- Bugscope Team you can see how these guys do their job -- how they hunt
- Bugscope Team look at the hooks at their inner 'shoulders'
- 11:26am
- Bugscope Team Deer are not domestic animals...sorry
- Bugscope Team when they want to feed, they will cling to grass with their legs up in the air, and when you or an animal walk by, their legs will grab on
- Bugscope Team they can hook themselves over leaves and have their arms reaching out to cling onto you as you pass by
- Teacher Are these not true insects? I only see 2 body parts and 4 sets of legs
- Guest Why di ticks look almost like spiders, they both have eight legs. Tom is asking. :)
- Bugscope Team they're not insects
- Bugscope Team they are arachnids
- Bugscope Team they are arachids
- Bugscope Team you are right!
- Bugscope Team except my spelling is wrong :)
- Bugscope Team sometimes the juveniles have six legs, but they have eight as adults
- Bugscope Team they have a cephalothorax like spiders, don't they?
Bugscope Team I am not sure if the terminology is the same...but yeah, pretty much
- Bugscope Team they do not jump or fly (thankfully)
- Bugscope Team yay haltere
- Bugscope Team the opening to the upper left is the fruit fly's spiracle (breathing hole)
- 11:31am
- Bugscope Team the ball-like thing is the haltere, which is a modified hindwing you find in Diptera, which from their name you know have only two wings
- Bugscope Team now we see the ommatidia that make up the compound eye, and the little bristles or setae that help the fruit fly sense windspeed, or wind direction
- Guest Tom asks, "Why do flies have hairs on their eyes?"
Bugscope Team The hairs help the fly to sense direction in the wind...if you remove the hairs, the fly doesn't seem to know where to go.
- Bugscope Team you can also get a good view of the antenna, to the back of the image we see now
- Teacher very neat!
- Guest Oh, thank you!
- Guest How would someone actually remove the setae?
Bugscope Team hahaha, some poor graduate student with a tiny tiny razor
- Teacher What is the stuff in the backround
- Bugscope Team Seriously
- Guest LOL!
- Bugscope Team behind all the insects you will see double stick carbontape and sometimes, in the smoother areas, silver paint to help keep the insects "glued" to the sample stub
- Teacher That is so cool!
- Bugscope Team scales!
- 11:36am
- Guest what color is this butterfly
- Bugscope Team butterflies, moths, mosquitos, silverfish, and very few other insects have scales
- Teacher What are those black lines?
Bugscope Team those are actually holes in the scales
- Guest Tom asks, Why do the scales have holes?
Bugscope Team well, it reduces the mass of the scale, so it's lighter, that is thought to help the butterfly fly around easier
- Bugscope Team yellow?
- Bugscope Team the round things are pigment granules
- Bugscope Team If it is yellow, it is probably a sulfur butterfly
- Teacher What color is the butterfly?
Bugscope Team it was a yellow butterfly
- Bugscope Team or a dog face butterfly
- Bugscope Team butterfly and moth scales will often have both structural colors and colors that come from pigments
- Bugscope Team hey hey!
- Bugscope Team salt!
- Bugscope Team this is salt from wendy's fast food restaurants
- Bugscope Team this is special salt
- Teacher lol
- Teacher why do they come in scares?
- Guest yunm
- Teacher does it look differently if you dissolve it and let it recrystallize?
Bugscope Team yes often it does, exactly
- Bugscope Team normal salt does not have those cool sort of incised patterns
- 11:42am
- Teacher Why is it special salt?
- Bugscope Team it loses the Aztec pattern and looks like normal cubic crystals
- Teacher When did you get this salt, asks Roman
- Bugscope Team With this microscope in environmental mode, we brought the chamber to 100% relative humidity and actually dissolved this salt before and recrystallized it. It was pretty cool
- Bugscope Team we don't know for sure but we think the salt has an anticaking agent in it that gives it that neat pattern
- Bugscope Team this batch of salt is a couple of years old
- Teacher Neat about the crystals
- Bugscope Team mosquito eye facets
- Teacher Why do they look shrivelled up?
Bugscope Team insects have moisture in them, and when they die the moisture evaporates and thus parts of the insect can shrivel up
- Bugscope Team the ommatidia would normally be round, like tiny basketballs, but they are a little dried out
- Teacher the detail is incredible!
Bugscope Team electron microscope rules!!!
- Bugscope Team you can see that they have a sort of substructure we don't see in many insect eyes
- Teacher why do they have dots on there eyeballs!?
- Bugscope Team those are submicron (nano) details
- Teacher What are the little dots all over each eye?
- 11:47am
- Bugscope Team we don't really know what the dots are
- Bugscope Team we see them with moths and butterflies as well
- Bugscope Team beetle head!
- Bugscope Team this is a japanese beetle we put in
- Bugscope Team whatever those dots are they are really really small :)
- Teacher Indeed!
- Teacher It looks really scary!
Bugscope Team Only scary if you are a lawn or a rose bush
- Bugscope Team see the lamellated antennae? and the eyes on either side of the head? and the palps?
- Teacher What are all of those hairs!
Bugscope Team many of the hairs we saw on the beetle were likely sensory -- mechanosensory -- so the beetle can feel when it has turned its head, for example
- Teacher What are those scales?
Bugscope Team sorry I missed the scales
- 11:53am
- Bugscope Team sometimes we will often see stuff that doesnt belong like dirt or dust, which we call juju. That might be what we see on its limbs
- Bugscope Team this was your flying insect, i'm not sure what it is though
- Bugscope Team so pretty!
- Bugscope Team one of its antlers is missing
- Teacher This is really neat, too
- Bugscope Team If we decrease the magnification, I may be able to tell what this is
- Bugscope Team we can show Annie the sample later, see if she can ID it
- Bugscope Team Annie is not here in this building. She is either in her lair or at work.
- Bugscope Team I am working on corrections of my dissertation at my apartment
- Bugscope Team this is some kinda specialized palp
- Teacher I was wondering--how interesting!
- Teacher We would like to extend our thanks to you for this wonderful experience!!!
- Bugscope Team K we are going to have to give the microscope up at noon our time.
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team thank you for all your great questions and for using bugscope with us!
- Teacher Thank you again!
- Bugscope Team You are very welcome. We appreciate your questions
- Bugscope Team This has been fun for us.
