Connected on 2009-07-30 10:00:00 from Brunswick, NC, US
- 8:32am
- Guest hi alex
- Guest hi scott
- Bugscope Team where are you from?
- Guest state?
- Bugscope Team yes, are you with today's session?
- Guest no
- Bugscope Team ah, okay, well, welcome as a guest
- Guest I am a guest
- Guest I'm from the state of Florida.
- Bugscope Team we have a session at 10AM central with a school in NC
- Bugscope Team we'll be setting up presets soon
- Guest NC?
- Guest OKAY
- Bugscope Team right now you can see the inside of the microscope vacuum chanber, with the stage, and bugs on that stage
- Bugscope Team North Carolina
- Bugscope Team good morning you guys
- Guest cool
- Bugscope Team 3.5 x 10-4
- Guest Hi Scott
- Bugscope Team Aditi I am pumping the chamber down. It needs to go to 1.3 x 10-4 mBar.
- Bugscope Team And I have a juicy spider in there that may be slowing things down a bit.
- Bugscope Team 2.3 x 10-4
- Guest pumping the chamber down?
- Bugscope Team yes the chamber, what we're looking at now, must be under vacuum for the SEM to work
- Guest are we going to get to see the juicy spider that is slowing things down
- 8:37am
- Guest what does SEM stand for?
Bugscope Team Scanning Electron Microscope
- Bugscope Team when we beam electrons at the sample, we get secondary electrons back from the conductive surface of the sample (which we have coated with gold-palladium). The 2ndary electrons are pretty weak and would bump into air molecules if we did not have a good vacuum.
- Guest okay
- Bugscope Team yeah we are planning to look at the spider; I mounted it so that its eyes are up.
- Bugscope Team the vacuum is close, actually, now
- Guest gold-palladium?
- Bugscope Team 1.6 x 10-4 mBar
- Bugscope Team yes an alloy of gold and palladium that covers, very thinly, the whole sample
- Guest what for?
- Bugscope Team we use a sputter coater to put the coating on, and it is only nanometers, like 6 or 7 nm, thick.
- Bugscope Team if the sample was not coated it would charge up with electrons, and the images would look terrible
- Guest why do you need it?
- Guest I am not sure I would want to see that!
- Bugscope Team if we were looking at a conductive sample, like a piece of copper or a clean coin, we would not need a conductive coat
- Guest got it
- Bugscope Team yeah it makes super dark and super bright areas, and it makes lines run horizontally along the image, looks terrible for sure
- 8:43am
- Guest when will the class be here?
Bugscope Team class is coming in an hour or so
- Guest wierd
- Bugscope Team sometimes we see it with moths, when the images are too bright
- Guest why with a moth?
- Bugscope Team moths have lots of scales, and they are so small they do not coat well, plus there are so many of them they do not carry a charge away from the sample
- Guest soon I won't be able to come to any bugscope sessions-because of school and all
- Bugscope Team that's not a super good explanation
- Guest hi Joanne
- Bugscope Team ok, sec. electron detector is ON!
- Bugscope Team I mean my explanation is not super good
- Guest electron detector? what's that
- Bugscope Team oh this is Scott, still, but I expect Joanne to be in soon, at which time I will use another confuser
- Guest oh hi scott
- Guest "confuser"
Bugscope Team scott calls computers, confusers
- Bugscope Team the secondary electron detector captures the signal from the electrons that are ejected from the sample surface by the primary electron beam
- 8:48am
- Guest why do you call computers confusers scott
- Guest what are we looking at
- Bugscope Team this is a wing edge i think, scott is working on the presets now
- Guest aditi1 is still me aditi
- Bugscope Team :)
- Guest eye?
- Bugscope Team yep, comoound eye
- Bugscope Team compound
- Guest what animals wing?
Bugscope Team a dragon fly
- Guest thought so
- Guest are these pictures of a dragonfly
- 8:54am
- Guest what part is this
- Bugscope Team this is some kind of fly
- Guest fruit fly maybe
- Bugscope Team it's a little big for a fruit fly, we thought at first it was a wasp
- Bugscope Team but it's got a haltere, so it is some kind of fly
- Guest how many types of flys are there
Bugscope Team estimated 240,000 species of fly
- Guest wierd
- Guest that is way more than
- Guest i could ever imagine
- Guest leg?
- Bugscope Team leg w/ ovipositor in front of it
- Guest does it use those hairs to hold on to things
- 9:00am
- Guest what are those 4 bumps for?
Bugscope Team those are eyes
- Bugscope Team the hairs are sensory
- Guest 4 eyes?
- Bugscope Team eight eyes
- Guest where are the others
- Bugscope Team they were on top of the head
- Guest still the fly
- Guest what are the hair that are sticking out everywhere
Bugscope Team those are setae, sensory hairs, help insects sense their environment
- Guest my screen went black
- Guest can't see any pictures
- Bugscope Team hit F5 (refresh)
- Guest i'll try
- Guest it worked
- 9:05am
- Guest what are these things that are shaped like leaves
Bugscope Team scales
- Guest will the class be here soon?
- Guest cool scales
- Guest what are we looking at
- Guest they look like a bunch of brooms
- Bugscope Team tenent setae
- Guest "tenent setae"
Bugscope Team tenant means "to hold" so these help the insect hold onto walls
- Guest makes sense
- Bugscope Team it's like Spanish 'tener'
- Guest okay
- 9:10am
- Bugscope Team but I guess orig from the Latin
- Bugscope Team or French tenir
- Guest claw/
- Guest claw?
- Bugscope Team totally
- Guest what exactly do they use claws for?
- Bugscope Team they use claws for grabbing food, fighting, holding stuff, typical monster type use...
- Guest what are all these little dots
Bugscope Team those are individual facets of the compound eye, called ommatidia
- Guest "monster type" quite funny
- 9:15am
- Guest okay
- Bugscope Team they kinda look like monsters in an SEM, don't they?
- Guest how long is this session going to be
Bugscope Team they are usually an hour
- Guest They do sort of look like monsters in the Scanning Electron Microscope
Bugscope Team right on SEM! good work aditi!
- Guest what is that fuzzy-ish thing
- Guest what is this pointy thing
- Bugscope Team Dude this is the serious tip of the fascicle, what sticks into your skin
- 9:20am
- Bugscope Team showing two of the lancets, or stylets
- Guest "fascicle"
- Bugscope Team they could also be called laciniae
- Guest "stylets"
- Guest what are all those words?
- Guest more scales?
- Bugscope Team cool, brochosomes
- Bugscope Team yes more scales
- Guest "brochosomes" what are those
Bugscope Team they are very small granules produced only by the leafhopper
- Bugscope Team Aditi you will need to get a leave of absence from school to help us with Bugscope.
- Guest don't know if I can get a leave of abscence scott
- Bugscope Team I just read that they were first discovered in 1952 with the aid of an electron microscope!
- Guest if they are only made by the leafhopper what are they doing on a moth
- Bugscope Team they may have been collected in the same net or trap
- 9:26am
- Guest so they can rub off and spread
- Bugscope Team yep
- Guest this is the head of a ?????
- Bugscope Team whirligig beetle
- Guest if i'm not wrong they can swim-whirligig beetle
- Guest nice claw
- Bugscope Team got it Dude they swim
- 9:32am
- Guest what are we looking at?
- Guest what is this
- Bugscope Team this is a dragonfly
- Guest I wonder when the class will get here
- Bugscope Team very soon
- Guest hope so
- 9:38am
- Guest there are not many girls like me that are interested in bugs
- Bugscope Team :)
- Bugscope Team you are so awesome!! Go Girls!
- Guest at least not in my class
- Bugscope Team Aditi you are a girl, how cool!
- Bugscope Team Sorry I did not know.
- Guest it's okay
- Guest my name dosn't tell you that because I am Indian
- Bugscope Team you have been with us for months now
- Bugscope Team so I am sorry not to have somehow figured it out
- Bugscope Team do you connect from home?
- Guest yes
- Bugscope Team what grade are you in?
- Guest i'll be going into 5th
- Bugscope Team so this is, like, summer and school's out for you, for now?
- Bugscope Team awesome! We run a really fun engineering camp here at U of I, you should think about coming one year. You are the perfect age!
- Bugscope Team i should probably know this, but has your class done bugscope before aditi?
- Guest yes school is out
- 9:43am
- Bugscope Team now we are asking you questions!
- Guest my class has done one before
- Bugscope Team Enthusiastic girls like you are the kind of future scientists we like to see at our camp?
- Bugscope Team not a question...oops
- Bugscope Team Alex says he is jealous that you have summer off.
- Bugscope Team i wish as a kid i went to school year around, so then as an adult i could have summers off....
- Guest maybe
- Bugscope Team Joanne has a cool website/youtube channel you might be interested in.
- Bugscope Team you might like my website joannelovesscience.com
- Guest what
- Guest i'll check it out
- Bugscope Team I'm in bioengineering now, but I got my master's degree with an entomologist
- Guest cool
- Bugscope Team I always loved science!
- 9:49am
- Guest neat website joanne
- Guest just checked it out
- Bugscope Team thank you. I have fun with it! I like to see young people excited about science, especially girls!
- Guest looks as if we are on a different planet
- Bugscope Team yeah I am cruising around on the spider head
- Guest hows the weather where you are
- Bugscope Team you are free to contact me through the website anytime
- Guest planet spider head!!!!
- Guest okay joanne
- Bugscope Team it's always the same; we are in the basement, 23 feet underground
- Bugscope Team yay!
- Bugscope Team but outside it has been super nice this summer, not hot, not humid, for the most part
- Guest 23 feet
- Guest its hot here in florida
- Bugscope Team planet spider head, I like that
- Guest and humid
- Bugscope Team do you have anoles and geckos in your yard?
- Guest it is raining right now
- Bugscope Team spider knee
- Guest not really but we have plenty of bees and tons of lizards
- Guest spider knee?
- Bugscope Team bees have mites too, sometimes
- 9:55am
- Guest not to mention snakes
- Guest mites? what are they
- Bugscope Team like this, as it happens
- Bugscope Team mites are not insects; they are arachnids, I think... related to spiders
- Guest hmm
- Bugscope Team honeybees have varroa mites on them, and those are much larger
- Bugscope Team hello HayLiv, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Good morning!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Guest hello
- Teacher Hello - we are logging in for our 11EDT session (Tavi w/ Love of Learning Homeschool in NC) :)
- Bugscope Team Hi Tavi!
- Teacher test
- Bugscope Team We are ready!
- Bugscope Team okay, the session is unlocked, you should now see controls on the right side
- Bugscope Team You may now drive if you would like!
- Teacher oh - the scroll is at the top - I was upside down!
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a dragonfly.
- Teacher this is our 1st session - may we play with the controls a little?
- 10:00am
- Bugscope Team yep, you have control
- Bugscope Team of course!
- Bugscope Team it's all yours
- Bugscope Team if you have any questions about what you are seeing, feel free to ask
- Bugscope Team and you are supposed to play with the controls
- Bugscope Team currently, we are looking at a dragonfly
- Bugscope Team this is one of the tiny limbs, and now we are looking at the thorax
- Teacher What are th e circular objects?
- Bugscope Team I am not sure -- I think they are some kind of dried fluid
- Teacher on the thorax
- Teacher okay
- Bugscope Team you could drive up close and see
- Bugscope Team they look kind of like big pollen grains
- Teacher pollen grains perhaps - thank you
- Teacher looking at the hairs now?
- Bugscope Team you may also choose from among the presets to go to a different area of the stub
- Guest Sorry I have to go- too much thunder and lightning
- Bugscope Team there are lots of critters on the stub for you to check out today
- Teacher oh yes - okay - going for the claw
- Bugscope Team good bye aditi
- Guest bye everybody
- Bugscope Team Oh sorry Aditi! See you soon?
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Teacher I didnt know dragonflies had claws
- Bugscope Team cool
- Bugscope Team bye aditi...look forward to hearing from you!
- Bugscope Team yes almost all insects have claws
- Teacher where are these located? on the front legs?
- Bugscope Team i'm not sure, you could try zooming out to see
- Bugscope Team we can tell that dragonflies are not really equipped to cling to walls or walk on the ceiling
- 10:05am
- Teacher it lookls as though there is a double claw here
- Bugscope Team because there is no pulvillus on the tarsi -- the 'forearm' segments
- Teacher what is a pulvillus? is the tarsi the forearm?
- Bugscope Team yes it is kind of cool-looking, and you can compare it to other claws on the stub
- Bugscope Team a pulvillus is a pad found on some of the tarsi, sometimes, that has tenent setae on it
- Teacher and the pulvillus (the pad) would enable an insect to cling to walls?
- Bugscope Team it is a pad of sticky setae that help insects/arthropods stick to vertical surfaces
- Teacher thank you
- Bugscope Team yes because of the tiny setae -- you can see more of them among the presets
- Teacher are we missing three legs? they would be wear those nubs are - on the right side?
- Bugscope Team yes, it looks like some legs are missing
- Bugscope Team when insects die they can dry out, and become fragile, or more so
- Teacher It would be interesting to see if that middle arm on the right side (insect's left) has a double claw as well
- Bugscope Team you can drive to see it
- Teacher We are going to zoom in on the mouth with the preset
- Bugscope Team if you can see where you want to go it is easier to use click to center rather than click to drive
- Bugscope Team nice job
- Bugscope Team serious mouthparts
- Teacher How do the hairs aid in capturing food? Is that their purpose?
- 10:10am
- Teacher Scary looking!
- Bugscope Team the hairs are usually sensory, some sort of sensory
- Teacher Wow!
- Bugscope Team some of the hairs (setae) may be chemosensory, so they could smell food
- Teacher so complex
- Bugscope Team like sometimes they are mechanosensory, like cat or rat whiskers
- Bugscope Team and as Alex said, some are chemosensory
- Bugscope Team some are also thermosensory
- Teacher I imagine that insects have highly-advanced sensory perception? How about their eyesight? Do we know much about it?
Bugscope Team flying insects have excellent eyesight, they have compound eyes which are very complex, with thousands of lens's in them
- Teacher oops - I meant to look at the eyes
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes you would be able to detect motion very quickly
- Teacher having a little hangup here - didnt mean to double post
Bugscope Team no problemo
- Bugscope Team preset #12 is a close-up of a mosquito compound eye
- Bugscope Team we don't see double posts, just as we hope you don't see ours
- Bugscope Team if your image ever goes black, just hit refresh to reset it (F5)
- Bugscope Team these are wing veins, and you can see the little spines
- Bugscope Team now one of the skeeters
- Bugscope Team it has little scars in its surface
- Bugscope Team great job driving
- Bugscope Team yes, very cool, these are the individual facets of the compound eye, they are called ommatidia
- Teacher that is one "eyeball"?
Bugscope Team insect lens's dont' work like humans do, they can't move around in the socket. but to compensate, insects can have thousands of static pointed lens's and the compound eye is curved, so the field of view is excellent
- Bugscope Team if you keep going you will be able to see the head
- Bugscope Team it is part of one compound eye
- Bugscope Team the left eye
- Bugscope Team each ommatidium has a lens in it
- Bugscope Team cool
- 10:15am
- Bugscope Team so cool, I love the scales on the head!
- Teacher very!
- Teacher to the right - those are the scales?
- Bugscope Team yes those are scales
- Bugscope Team mosquitos, butterflies, moths, silverfish, and a few beetles have scales
- Teacher Do compund eyes detect individual picture w/ each lens? like multiple images?
Bugscope Team totally, the bug brain assembles all those images into one... we guess. it's hard to know for sure what a bug really "sees", we can't ask them about it ;)
- Bugscope Team when you brush off a mosquito and not quite squish it, sometimes you see a little black streak on your arm. Those are usually scales left behind
- Bugscope Team we found some flattened setae on the spider abdomen that look like smooth scales as well
- Teacher okay - reading your explanation - the compound eye creates a mosaic of one image?
- Bugscope Team yes we believe it creates frequently updating mosaics in the brain
- Teacher Oh cool - the black streaks are scales? I never thought of mosquitoes as having scales
- Teacher (explaining compound eye to children - one sec)
- Bugscope Team if you look at a fruit fly brain, as many people do, you see that much of the brain is devoted to visual processing
- Bugscope Team like a huge majority of the brain is dedicated to processing images
- Teacher looking at moth claw now
- Bugscope Team another claw here
- Bugscope Team another claw, on a moth, yes!
- Bugscope Team and this one can hold onto walls, too
- Teacher daughter says that insect claws resemble birds claws
Bugscope Team yes! totally. it's very interesting what some of these small structures look like under a microscope. some things are "discovered" under a microscope, brochosomes for example, preset #16
- 10:20am
- Bugscope Team inside the tarsus is a sort of tendon called an unguitractor that pulls the claw open and closed
- Bugscope Team they do, don't they?
- Bugscope Team they are very tiny
- Teacher what are the elongated structures on the leg?
- Teacher scales?
- Bugscope Team yep, those are scales
- Bugscope Team Moths and other insects with scales can leave some behind if caught in a spider's web
- Teacher the dust on a moths' wings - that isnt scales, is it?
- Bugscope Team brochosomes are those small balls. try to zoom in on one, they are very cool looking
- Bugscope Team not dust, but brochosomes! very cool things produced only by the leafhopper
- Bugscope Team you may need to focus, if you want help let us know
- Bugscope Team to us the scales seem like powder or dust
- Bugscope Team the dust is indeed the scales!
- Bugscope Team scott is focusing a bit
- Bugscope Team so if you catch a moth and have dust on your hands, they have given you their scales
- Bugscope Team 42,000 x magnification, very sweet
- Bugscope Team the brochs are about 300 nm in diameter
- Bugscope Team they may protect eggs, keep them from drying out
- Bugscope Team see how the brochosomes look like soccer balls, they are thought to help moisten the leafhopper eggs, or keep them moist
- Teacher TU for the focus - this computer is lagging a bit
- 10:25am
- Bugscope Team they are said to be produced only by leafhoppers
- Bugscope Team brochosomes were totally unknown to humans until 1952 when someone looked at a leafhopper under and electron microscope and found some
- Teacher those spots are actually holes in the brochosomes? like a sponge?
Bugscope Team yeah, depressions in the surface of the brochosome. i'm not sure why it has those holes... interesting question!
- Bugscope Team the images we're getting would be better if we were closer to the sample
- Bugscope Team yes they are pores or holes
- Teacher are the indents where other brochosomes once were?
- Bugscope Team some brochosomes are oval
- Bugscope Team no those are indents on the scales but have nothing to do with the brochs
- Teacher fascinating
- Bugscope Team :)
- Teacher we see insects as so simple, but they are highly evolved specifically for their environment
Bugscope Team totally
- Bugscope Team the shape and geometry of scales can produce structural colors
- Bugscope Team scales are some of the most fascinating structures to view using this type of microscope
- Teacher looking thru spider slides - going to look at a claw
- Bugscope Team one thing kids notice about looking at insects close up is how hairy they are. lots of setae on insects, all over. those setae are critical, they help them sense their environment
- 10:31am
- Teacher setae are like cats whiskers?
Bugscope Team yep, totally
- Bugscope Team because insects have a hard exoskeleton and can't feel with it, they need those setae (which stick through the exo to nerves underneath) to feel things
- Bugscope Team some setae are like cat or rat whiskers
- Bugscope Team they are like cat whiskers if your cat was in a suit of armour
- Bugscope Team that is, some setae are mechanosensory
- Teacher what is the substance that gives some scales their iridescent color
- Bugscope Team what makes them iridescent is the shape
- Teacher neat!
- Bugscope Team the ridges, and their spacing, make colors
- Teacher now are we looking at bottom of the claw?
- Bugscope Team that's why they are called structural colors
- Bugscope Team this is the end of one of the spider's limbs
- Teacher the bottom of his foot looks like carpet
- Bugscope Team it also has tiny setae on it, and they have super tiny setae on them
- Bugscope Team light bounces off of the different structural patterns and looks like colors to our eyes!
- Teacher why dont spiders stick to their own webs?
- Bugscope Team yes if you were to look up close you would see that it is more like a gecko foot
- Teacher and can spiders be caught in other webs?
- Bugscope Team some web is not sticky
- Bugscope Team and they can eat the web, as they usually do anyway, if they get stuck
- Bugscope Team some of the silk they produce is not sticky
- Teacher and the spider knows which parts are or are not sticky?
- Bugscope Team also, if you have scales, you can leave the scales and slip out of a web in some cases
- Teacher we wzoomed in with camera on a spider web the other day - one strand is actually many strrands
- Teacher ooh yes - like a lizard loses part of his tale to escape
- Bugscope Team spiders have lots of setae that probably help keep them from getting trapped
- 10:36am
- Teacher *tail
- Bugscope Team geckos do that
- Bugscope Team :)
- Bugscope Team this is do cool
- Bugscope Team so cool
- Bugscope Team this is such a great image!
- Bugscope Team this is a dust mite
- Teacher this is an awesome image
- Bugscope Team you can tell from the scalebar that this is super small
- Bugscope Team so very lovely
- Teacher zooming in on the "fingerprint" ridges
- Bugscope Team usually they collapse without proper preparation, but this one looks good!
- Bugscope Team yes this was a great surprise for us
- Bugscope Team they are similar to ticks in that they have lots of room for expansion
- Teacher what is that little ball at top center of frame?
- Bugscope Team looks like pollen or a mold spore
- Bugscope Team it is awfully small
- Teacher Im having slow response time with this computer - will have to try laptop next time
- Bugscope Team it is best to use Safari
- Bugscope Team we have trouble with lag as well, sometimes
- 10:41am
- Bugscope Team I did that, scince I am sitting at the 'scope
- Bugscope Team it looks like a mold spore to me
- Teacher We're wondering about all those ridges
- Bugscope Team now we see charging
- Bugscope Team like an accordian, this bug can expand
- Bugscope Team if it consumes enough stuff
- Bugscope Team hey scott what do they eat?
- Bugscope Team the ridges ensure that if the mite gets a good meal it can, as Joanne said, expand
- Bugscope Team any idea?
- Teacher ah! the ridges allow for expansion?
- Teacher ok - tu
- Teacher icky!
- Teacher :)
- Teacher ack!
- Bugscope Team there's a song about mites-- they eat flakes of skin like taco chips
- Teacher spider head!
- Bugscope Team I guess something's gotta clean up after us!
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Bugscope Team you can count the eyes
- Bugscope Team harder to see the four on top
- Teacher oh no - I was finally getting over fear of spiders - this just set me back ;)
- Teacher Is each spider eye a compound eye?
- Bugscope Team chelicerae in front, but we cannot see the poison pores and barely see the fangs if we drive down there
- Bugscope Team It is a new perspective, that's for sure!
- Bugscope Team they are, according to me, simple eyes
- Bugscope Team pretty sure they are not compound
- Teacher trying to drive down to fangs -
- Bugscope Team often spiers do not see so well
- Bugscope Team spiders, that is
- Teacher cant get the little drive symbol to come up - computer thinking about it
- 10:46am
- Bugscope Team sorry, sometimes we log out and back in to clear
- Bugscope Team but I moved us to the fang
- Bugscope Team it is hard to see with the hair and palps
- Teacher tu
- Bugscope Team this is a female, I think, because it has narrow palps
- Bugscope Team male palps are often fatter, more bulbous
- Teacher what are palps?
- Teacher Im going to log out and back in - brb
- Bugscope Team because female spiders are often larger, and often quite hungry, they may eat the males
- Bugscope Team palps are the extendable mouthparts --accessory mouth parts
- Bugscope Team so males sometimes make a wad of web and paste it onto the front of the chelicerae so the female cannot bite
- Student good idea!
- Student :)
- Bugscope Team after I had read about that I found a female with a wad of web there
- Student I have a better response time now but the controls are gone - we dont mind if you drive :)
- Bugscope Team sorry I just fixed that for you'
- Bugscope Team forgot
- Student I think we are logged in twice
- Bugscope Team yeah no problem
- Student Okay - we now have the driver controls but no presets
- Student there they are - thank you
- Student zooming out on the spiders head
- 10:52am
- Student fly spiracle - what is a spiracle?
- Bugscope Team it is the hole that insects breathe through
- Bugscope Team there are several along the sides of the abdomen on every insect
- Student oh wow - we still dont have the image up to zoom in and out - thats okay - session is almost over
- Student but where is that hole (spriacle) located on the insect?
- Bugscope Team zoom out to see
- Bugscope Team they are often on the sides of the segments
- Student oh - there it is!
- Student Great shot!
- Bugscope Team two per segment, on either side
- Bugscope Team brb
- Bugscope Team very neat!
- Student on how many segments?
- Bugscope Team depending on how we mount the insects in the microscope, sometimes we can't see them
- Student son is telling me that the more oxygent there is in the air, the larger the insects will grow
- Student look at those other teeny holes - three in a diaginal line - see them?
- Bugscope Team I've heard that, too! They are limited in size by the weight of their exoskeletons
- Bugscope Team so they can only grow to a certain size
- 10:57am
- Bugscope Team before it takes too much energy to move around
- Bugscope Team I think those are bases of broken-off spines
- Student are yeh - makes sense - the spines
- Student Okay - we have enjoyed this immensely and have learned much
- Bugscope Team yes when the dinosaurs were around and there were lots of plants there was also a higher level of O2 in the air
- Bugscope Team Cool!
- Student We are looking forward to another session. This time we will catch the critter and send to you
- Bugscope Team This stuff is all stored on your member page.
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-085/
- Student Yes, Son is telling me that insects of past were much larger due to that higher oxygen level- 8ft long centipedes - wow!
- Student Okay - thank you very much! See you later :)
- Bugscope Team Alex had to go but I used his computer to do that...
- Student lol
- Student bye bye
- Bugscope Team centipedes are not insects, though... ;)
- Bugscope Team bye!
- Bugscope Team bye!
- Student Oh - not insects? another chapter for us :) bye bye
