Connected on 2009-04-29 15:00:00 from , CA, US
- 2:26pm
- Bugscope Team hi rb, welcome to bugscope
- Bugscope Team we are setting up presets for today's session in 35 minutes
- Guest Wow! Pretty incredible technology. Thanks for letting me watch.
- Bugscope Team no problemo
- Bugscope Team this is bugscope version 2.0, old version was gnarly cgi stuff, but it worked in its day!
- Bugscope Team if you stay for the whole session, we can let you control the scope after the school is done
- Bugscope Team or you could come back later
- Bugscope Team the school is online from 3-4PM central time
- 2:32pm
- Guest That would be great. When is the session sceduled to end?
- Bugscope Team 4PM central
- Bugscope Team but you are welcome to watch the session too. they can get pretty exciting depending on how many students login
- 2:37pm
- 2:43pm
- Bugscope Team hi mr. roman, welcome to bugscope!
- Teacher Hello
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team we couldn't use the bee or the snail, too much moisture in them for the scope vacuum
- Teacher how does this work? this is the first time we have ever done this
- Bugscope Team it's easy, and we are here to help you with any problems you might have
- Bugscope Team above this chat are images coming from the electron microscpe
- Bugscope Team you can control the scope, and drive around and look at things
- Bugscope Team you can also click on a preset to move to that location
- Bugscope Team right now, we are still setting up (presets) and we'll hand over control to you in about 5-10 minutes
- Teacher so minus the snail, and bee are we only viewing the 3 left?
- Bugscope Team if your image evern goes black (happens occasionally) try a page refresh (F5)
- 2:48pm
- Bugscope Team we've got more than 3, we have a beetle, a tick, a mosquito, assassin bug, caterpillar, fruit fly, etc
- Teacher ok thank you
- Bugscope Team Rob preset no. 12 is the one with the little haltere-looking thing.
- Bugscope Team I see it. Funky.
- Bugscope Team ROB!
- Bugscope Team Mr Roman's class is on in like 11 minutes, so it'll be a little while before we can cruise to it.
- Bugscope Team hey
- Bugscope Team Yeah Annie I called your lab with a 'bycid question. ;)
- Bugscope Team So I, uh, have no idea what that is.
- Bugscope Team Me neither
- Bugscope Team It's in the wrong place to even be a "third" wing.
- Bugscope Team Maybe it's a mite or a seed. But it looks like it has an indentation for the 'haltere' to fit into, as Cate pointed out.
- Bugscope Team It could be some sort of enlarged axillary sclerite.
- Bugscope Team I should ask Ian. He would know
- Bugscope Team we are almost done with presets.... just another moment mr. roman
- 2:53pm
- Teacher Not a problem
- Bugscope Team Mr Roman this is a nice set of critters you sent.
- Teacher great im glad the shipped ok
- Bugscope Team okay, presets are done, session is unlocked, mr roman, you should see controls on the right side of your browser now
- Bugscope Team go ahead and start driving around
- Bugscope Team Mr Roman we are ready to roll.
- 3:00pm
- Teacher Yes, the kids are ready to do their presentations
- Bugscope Team Mr Roman you can choose from among the presets, change mag, drive into the wilderness on your own, click to center (safer), focus, etc.
- Bugscope Team these are live images from an electron microscope. when you click on magnify, the ESEM is actually changing it's magnification, and the resulting image(s) are sent to you through this bugscope web interface
- Bugscope Team at higher mags, you'll need to adjust the focus a bit, sometimes
- 3:05pm
- Bugscope Team when using click to drive (part of navigation), make sure to click once to start moving, then click again to stop. an alternative to click to drive, is click to center, which is much easier to use
- Bugscope Team this is a head of a ladybug
- Teacher one of the students questions was do lady bugs bite?
Bugscope Team Occasionally lady bird beetles will bite. The most notorious biters are the Asian multicolored lady beetles, the orange ladybugs that are around in the fall. They frequently bite.
- Bugscope Team the Asian ladybirds are said to mistake nice pink skin for something they would normally eat
- Bugscope Team They are also attracted to light colored surfaces, like white tshirts or if you are me, extremely white arms
- Bugscope Team ladybugs are predators -- they eat other insects, including aphids
- 3:10pm
- Bugscope Team this is an ant with a very complex compound eye and ocelli -- like a wasp
- Bugscope Team compound eyes are made up of hundreds of individual facets, called ommatidia. each one has a lens in it. if you mag up to the eye you'll see the ommatidia better
- Bugscope Team And the ocelli are smaller versions of the eye that can only detect light and dark.
- 3:15pm
- Bugscope Team here now we can see the eye up close!
- Bugscope Team Ants have much smaller eyes than many other types of insects.
- Bugscope Team the compound eye here also has some setae (insect hairs) in between the facets
- Bugscope Team That is because they live underground and in dark places and don't rely on their vision as much as a fly or a bee does.
- Bugscope Team often they have very few ommatidia -- they look like raspberries. and some species of ants do not bother to have eyes at all
- Teacher why do they have hair on the eye?
Bugscope Team Insects can't feel, smell, or taste anything through the exoskeleton, so they have to use hairs when they want to do these things. As Scot said, the hair is likely for feeling things that bump the eye.
- Bugscope Team the hair is likely mechanosensory -- they can feel when something is touching the eye
- Bugscope Team when we look at fruit fly eyes we see setae like that between most of the facets -- the ommatidia
- Teacher do all ants bite?
Bugscope Team I suspect all ants would bite if they got the chance. But a lot of them are too small to get their mandibles around your skin.
- Bugscope Team this is the simple eye found on top of the ant head
- Bugscope Team also called an ocellus
- Bugscope Team usually we will see three of these, in a triangle on top of the head
- 3:20pm
- Bugscope Team Some ants also sting
- Bugscope Team Yes sometimes we see ants with stingers!
- Bugscope Team Ants generally get more information using their antennae than they do using their eyes
- Bugscope Team this ant is glowing a little because it is charging up with electrons
- Bugscope Team Nice view of that ocellus.
- Bugscope Team all of the samples we are looking at are in a vacuum chamber, and there is an electron beam passing continuously across the areas that we see
- Bugscope Team rolypoly
- Bugscope Team here is the rolypoly aka pillbug
- 3:25pm
- Bugscope Team its head is to the top, tucked into a ball with the rest of the body
- Bugscope Team Not exactly an insect, but closely related - it's a crustacean, like a crab or a lobster.
- Bugscope Team roman, i just transfered control over to your new login as "roman". Mr. Roman seems to be disconnected now.
- Bugscope Team a compound eye can be seen in the top middle of the image
- Bugscope Team like a Japanese spider crab, my new favorite
- Student im back on
- Bugscope Team yay!
- Bugscope Team Not an insect....
- Bugscope Team These pillbugs actually have gills, even though they live on land. That's why you always find them in moist places.
- Student how big can the grow
Bugscope Team These guys in your garden will never be more than a centimeter. But other isopods that live in the ocean can get enormous - over a foot long!
- Bugscope Team we have looked for gills before, not sure we've ever ID'd them
- 3:30pm
- Bugscope Team the eye!
- Bugscope Team (above where we are now)
- Bugscope Team see the eye?
- Student what do they eat?
Bugscope Team They are "detritovores," which means they'll eat little bits of algae, soil, and microbes. Decaying things.
- Bugscope Team it's the little bunch of bumps
- Student no what part is the eye?
Bugscope Team it is the top of the image, it looks like bumps
- Bugscope Team there it is!
- Bugscope Team bad spppelling
- Student what is on the eye?
- Bugscope Team juju
- Student juju?
- Bugscope Team juju = dirt, junk, stuff, etc.
- Bugscope Team often we find unidentifiable film or goo on our samples
- Student what are these cracks?
- 3:36pm
- Bugscope Team it looks like a droplet of something fell on the head and this is the dried bits of it
- Bugscope Team yay this is a fruit fly
- Bugscope Team its antennae are still intact, and its mouthparts look pretty good as well
- Student do fruit flys bite?
Bugscope Team Nope, they don't have biting mouthparts
- Bugscope Team see the compound eye witih all of the bristles, or setae, sticking out of it?
- Bugscope Team They can just sort of lick you.
- 3:41pm
- Bugscope Team here are the hairs in between the facets again, you can see them more prominently here
- Bugscope Team They will, however, fly around your face and annoy you if they get in your house.
- Bugscope Team Daniel, who worked on bugscope in the beginning, raised fruit flies in his kitchen for us. Until he got married.
- Bugscope Team this is a really hairy caterpillar, and it only has simple eyes (5 on each side by the looks of it)
- Bugscope Team the caterpillar also has some hitchhikers on its body
- Student it has 5 eyes
- Student what are the bumps?
- 3:46pm
- Bugscope Team the five small bumps are the eyes; do you mean other ones?
- Bugscope Team the eyes, or the stemmata
- Student how long do the live?
- Bugscope Team it depends on the caterpillar
- Bugscope Team here is a little aphid that got stuck on the caterpillar
- Bugscope Team caterpillars are eating machines; they store up lots of food so they can metamorphose into butterflies or moths
- Bugscope Team Many butterflies and moths do not feed as adults--all the nutrition they ever get they obtain as a caterpillar
- 3:51pm
- Student how do the communicate?
Bugscope Team Most moths and butterflies communicate by smell. They are able to detect each other over long distances using chemicals that they release. These chemicals are called pheromones. Many brightly colored butterflies also communicate by sight.
- Student do moths eat clothes?
Bugscope Team the moth larvae are the ones that destroy clothes. The moth as adults do no harm
- Bugscope Team A Monarch butterfly takes about two months to go from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. and they go in waves over the warm months. then they fly to Mexico and hang out for several months
- Bugscope Team pollen grains!
- 3:57pm
- Bugscope Team whoa tick head!
- Bugscope Team this the capitulum
- Bugscope Team when it bites it moves the edge pieces out of the way
- Student is this the mouth or head?
- Bugscope Team and this central part -- the hypostome -- sticks into your skin
- Bugscope Team this is the head/proboscis
- Bugscope Team you can see the recurved spines that hold it into your skin
- Student what are the three round balls on the top right side?
- Bugscope Team the things on either side with palps that look like weird eyes fold down to the side
- Bugscope Team those are pollen grains
- Bugscope Team good job driving!
- Student Thanks!
- Bugscope Team it was probably hanging out on a flower or a plant before it grabbed onto one of my friends
- Bugscope Team juju
- Student what is the black stuff all over it
- Bugscope Team yeah there is some sort of goop on this ticks mouthparts as well
- Bugscope Team the opposite side of the part with the spines is similar looking but has finer features that rasp into your skin
- Bugscope Team maybe it had a small snack before it was caught
- 4:02pm
- Bugscope Team also on the other side of the head we would likely find eyespots that are actually tiny arrays of pits
- Bugscope Team this is the tip of the mosquito's proboscis
- Student proboscis?
- Bugscope Team female mosquitos are the ones that bite
- Bugscope Team this is the sheath that holds the bundle of sharp parts that penetrate your skin
- Bugscope Team was the sheath -- the proboscis
- Student why dont males bite?
Bugscope Team The females need the iron component of blood to form their eggs. Males don't lay eggs, so they don't need iron and so they don't bite.
- Bugscope Team now we see compound eyes
- 4:07pm
- Bugscope Team this is the ant, again
- Bugscope Team you can see some of its mouthparts -- some of its palpls
- Bugscope Team palps
- Bugscope Team ants often look like they have a whole 'nother insect in their mouth
- Bugscope Team this is one of the wildest looking caterpillars we have seen
- Bugscope Team the hairs can be a deterrent to keep predators from eating it
- Bugscope Team sometimes the hairs can have poison in them
- Bugscope Team caterpillars often need to have defenses like that
- Student what are wholes in images
Bugscope Team they look to be the pores where the hairs were attached and have since fallen off
- Bugscope Team some caterpillars are preyed upon by parasitic wasps, which sting them to paralyze them and then inject eggs into their bodies. the larvae then eat their way out
- 4:12pm
- Bugscope Team some caterpillars, like tarantulas, can release those hairs into the air. the hairs can get caught in your lungs
- Student thats seems to conclude our session guys. i would like to thank you guys for all the info / help today my kids enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. tthanks for working with us as far as the timing goes i really appreciate it
- Bugscope Team Thank You Roman!
- Bugscope Team Thank you for your questions.
- Bugscope Team thanks for all your questions and joining us today
- Student we had a young group today so the questions seemed kind of silly but the loved it
- Bugscope Team Awesome.
- Bugscope Team you can visit your member page at http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2009-031/ anytime to view chat and images from today
- Bugscope Team They are not the silliest we've ever seen, by far!
- Bugscope Team yeah and they were pretty quiet kids
- Bugscope Team from our perspective
- 4:18pm
- Bugscope Team the haltere!
- Student awesome, scot thanks for all your help we will definitley be doing this again so ill keep in touch. i read somwhere that you guys love post cards so ill send one from overe here in california . thanks once again guys
- Bugscope Team thanks that would be great roman!
- Bugscope Team Cool. We need postcards for the Bugscope bulletin board!
- Bugscope Team alright -- over and out!
- Bugscope Team bye bye!
