Connected on 2009-10-29 12:00:00 from Medford, OR, US
- 11:26am
- Bugscope Team We're setting up for today's session.
- 11:34am
- 11:39am
- 11:46am
- 11:52am
- Teacher Hello! We're excited about today's session!
- Bugscope Team Hello! Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team We are almost done setting up.
- Bugscope Team Cate and Alex are doing the setup.
- Bugscope Team This is the abdomen of one of the spiders.
- Bugscope Team was the abdomen
- Bugscope Team we wanted to see if the pattern showed up
- Bugscope Team hello! welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team just unlocked the session
- Bugscope Team Alright now you may drive if you wish. Alex is ScotJ for now..
- 11:58am
- Bugscope Team now it's me :)
- Teacher Excellent! We are not going to have all students back for about 10 minutes.
- Bugscope Team DreamExtreme you have control of the microscope anytime you wish.
- Bugscope Team Hello glake!
- Bugscope Team please let us know when you have questions
- Guest Hello. Thank you for letting me view.
- Bugscope Team about the samples, or the microscope...
- Bugscope Team glake once we start, DreamEx has control of the microscope and can click on any of the presets to tell the microscope to go to that place. DreamEx also can drive directly, change the mag, etc.
- 12:03pm
- Bugscope Team let us know if you have questions -- that's what Alex, Annie, Cate, and I are here for.
- Guest This is fabulous. I just heard about this site a few minutes ago and thought I'd observe and let my teachers know what I thought about Bugscope. I wish I could grab them now to obeserve this spider.
- Bugscope Team glake I am driving a bit so you can see some more of the presets, until the school starts
- Bugscope Team this is another spider, and we can see the serrations in the side of this fang
- Guest Thank you so much. I'm trying not to intrude on the session you are beginning.
- Bugscope Team and here we see a few ommatidia -- the facets of the eye -- of the bee
- Guest Do you have a posted schedule of upcoming sessions?
- Bugscope Team we can see now that the eye has lots of fungal hyphae on its surface -- the fungus is doing its job
- Bugscope Team on the front page of the web site, on the right side, but it doesn'
- 12:08pm
- Bugscope Team t show when we're in session because that's where it says Lucky You!
- Guest Yes, I feel very lucky indeed to come at just the right time.
- Bugscope Team we are booked into January or February now -- we can only do so many session per week because other people use the microscope for their research
- Guest What is this that we are viewing?
- Bugscope Team this is part of the vestiture on the bee's head, but it is mostly fungus
- Bugscope Team and here we are on the tenent setae -- the tiny sticky hairs that help the fly cling to surfaces
- Bugscope Team now you can see where the tenent setae are, at the end of one of the tarsi
- Bugscope Team you can see the fly's claws
- Guest Amazing. Certainly exciting.
- 12:13pm
- Bugscope Team looks like dirt here -- dirtbombs
- Teacher We're here. We're going to read back through the chat window quickly.
- Bugscope Team cool, you should see controls on the right, you can start using them to control the scope anytime
- Bugscope Team DreamEx you are the supreme ruler.
- Bugscope Team and if you have any questions, please just ask
- Bugscope Team you can click on a preset to goto that location
- 12:18pm
- Teacher Wonderful! Thank you! We have about 30 5th grade students in the room now.
- Bugscope Team flying aphid
- Bugscope Team hi students! welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team aphids have soft bodies, so if we cannot critical point dry them they will shrivel, often
- Bugscope Team this is a winged aphid you sent us
- Bugscope Team we had these all over town for a week or so
- Bugscope Team you couldn't go outside without getting them on you
- Teacher Is the aphid we sent you the same variety you have locally?
- Bugscope Team yeah, they were aphids that feed off the soybeans, and since the soybean crop yield was low this year, they were looking for some other food, and found us humans!!! ack!! attack of the aphids!!!
- Bugscope Team luckily the ladybugs are helping take care of them
- Bugscope Team these are, as Alex said, soybean aphids. they were green
- Bugscope Team yeah the ladybugs are fat and happy
- Bugscope Team In the fall the soybean aphids migrate from their summer host (soybeans) to their winter hibernation spot (buckthorn)
- Teacher We know them well! We'd love to have fat and happy ladybugs around here!
- Bugscope Team Soybean aphids, like soybeans, are originally from China. They are an invasive species.
- Bugscope Team we can mail some to you -- they've started to come inside
- 12:24pm
- Bugscope Team click to stop
- Bugscope Team you can see the doublestick carbon tape in the background
- Teacher What are we looking at here? The students are grossing out!
- Bugscope Team often we put silver paint down to help ground the critters, but aphids are so small they would be engulfed in paint
- Bugscope Team it's another aphid
- Bugscope Team not sure what all the juju is outside of its body
- Bugscope Team very long proboscis
- Bugscope Team you can take the mag up if you want
- Bugscope Team I think I see one of the eyes. Which you could center on using click to center.
- Bugscope Team the eye!
- Bugscope Team it's a little compound eye
- Bugscope Team Aphids can transmit diseases to plants, they also secrete a sticky substance called honeydew, which gums up the plant and grows mildew
- Bugscope Team looks like one of its antennae busted off.
- 12:29pm
- Bugscope Team see the facets of the compound eye? you can compare them with those of the bee.
- Bugscope Team ants like sweet stuff and sometimes 'farm' aphids for the honeydew
- Bugscope Team honeydew is excreted from the cornicles, which are little tubes that look like dual exhausts on the back of the aphid
- Teacher We're going to jump to the bee eye now.
- Bugscope Team but some aphids don't like to be bothered by ants, so they excrete glue, rather than honeydew, from the cornicles
- Bugscope Team this is quite different
- Bugscope Team you can tell about how big the eye is by looking at the micron bar, to the lower left on the screen
- Bugscope Team honey bees are cool. How often do we get to eat something an insect produces
Bugscope Team Well Cate, you would be surprised. The red dye that is commonly used in juices and fruit snacks come from an insect, as does confectioners shellac, which is also used in some candies. Red dye and shellac are not nearly as yummy as honey, though!
- Bugscope Team this bee was enveloped in fungus
- 12:34pm
- Bugscope Team and you can see it all over
- Teacher Is fungus common with bees, or was this an especially unhygenic bee?
- Bugscope Team it is something that came along after the bee died
- Bugscope Team eventually everything that dies, except Lenin, will rot
- Teacher Thank you, Scott, for giving us our daily dose of Lenin humor!
- Bugscope Team I think Timothy Leary's head is probably not covered with fungus, but it may have freezer burn.
- Teacher Okay, we now have well over half of the class that will avoid juices and fruit snacks!
- Bugscope Team well i hope they don't avoid honey, because the process in which that is made can sound gross
- Bugscope Team here you can see the tip of one of the bee's jaws
- Bugscope Team It is not in EVERY red thing--and really, I would rather eat a dye made from an insect than some weird chemical.
- Bugscope Team on the left
- Bugscope Team Annie is an entomologist, and sometimes she does eat insects.
- 12:39pm
- Bugscope Team On occasion, I have eaten an insect on purpose. I don't really like them though, they taste like dirt.
- Bugscope Team like some cerambycid species can only be distinguished by tasting them
- Bugscope Team I would rather eat other things.
- Bugscope Team I have never eaten a cerambycid, Scot
- Bugscope Team that would be tantamount to cannibalism
- Bugscope Team Although they do eat the larvae in the tropics
- Teacher The students are asking about the rather large specimin we sent you. Were you able to use it at all?
- Bugscope Team the mole cricket?
- Bugscope Team it was a mole cricket
- Bugscope Team it is so huge, we put it in its own desiccator
- Bugscope Team we use it to scare people
- Teacher Yes, I believe so. Were you able to dry it? We were all pretty scared of it too!
- Bugscope Team the microscope stage is 50 mm in diameter, and mole cricket would have filled the whole stage
- Bugscope Team Mole crickets are a great example of ecological convergence--if you look at a picture of a mole cricket and a picture of a mole and you make the photos the same size, they are difficult to tell apart.
- Bugscope Team it is still drying. it may be interesting if it has mites
- 12:45pm
- Bugscope Team be sure and check out a couple of the spiders you sent!
- Teacher We're trying to jump to a new preset, but it won't let us.
- Bugscope Team I can't drive either! sorry about that -- we will fix it
- Bugscope Team el fixto grande
- Bugscope Team A mole cricket is a good find--someone in the class is a budding entomologist, I think!
- Bugscope Team this is one of the fangs of one of the spiders, and we can see here how the edge is serrated like a steak knife
- Teacher We actually thought it was a Jerusalem Cricket...were we wrong?
Bugscope Team Umm...well, it could be. I haven't actually seen the cricket...I am in CA, and the cricket is in Illinois!
- 12:50pm
- Teacher We just zoomed out for context. Is this the top or underside of the spider?
- Bugscope Team yes this is the underside
- Bugscope Team underside, yeah, cate got ya
- Bugscope Team you can see the pedipalps, and you can see the crossed fangs, below
- Teacher Are the pedipalps the coiled parts?
Bugscope Team yes we have never seen them quite like this before
- 12:55pm
- Teacher McKenzie, our student who brought that spider in (and named him Lancy) just said, "Awww...he was so unique!"
- Bugscope Team DreamEx it may be a Jerusalem cricket. It is very smelly, and we were mostly impressed by its size but did not want to get too close.
- Bugscope Team well the males are the ones with big palps like that, so it is a good name
- Bugscope Team you all sent us so many spiders. We could only fit 2 though sorry
- Teacher Courtney, our student who brought in the MegaCricket, found three of them. 1 was in her kitchen!
- Teacher In our last minutes with you, is there anything you'd especially like us to see?
- Bugscope Team there you have found the fangs -- I think you are doing quite well
- Bugscope Team see if there is a poison pore
- Bugscope Team Those Jerusalem crickets freak me out a little. They look kind of like a creepy baby doll. I get them in some of my beetle traps here in California.
- Bugscope Team you can also see one of the claws, just below where we are now.
- Bugscope Team the poison pores, or venom ducts, are at the end of the fang, but Cate says they didn't show up -- they are either covered or on the opposite side
- 1:01pm
- Bugscope Team this is one of the claws -- at the end of one of the eight legs
- Bugscope Team spiders have the ability to jettison their limbs at will, for example if they get bitten and they can sense venom entering that limb they will just let it go
- Bugscope Team you might check out the roly polies
- Teacher Which preset is that?
- Bugscope Team 7
- Bugscope Team and 6
- Bugscope Team the rolled up one is no. 7
- Bugscope Team this is its eye, and if you take the mag down you can see the whole head
- Bugscope Team now you can see its antennae
- 1:06pm
- Bugscope Team its head is below the antennae
- Teacher How long does it take you typically to prepare a bug for the microscope?
Bugscope Team probably about 10 minutes or so. I select the insects to use, then I put them on the aluminum disk that has carbon tape on it and dab silver paint around them. Before they go in the microscope we also coat everything with gold-palladium to make it conductive
- Bugscope Team true bug head
- Bugscope Team this is its proboscis. it has piercing/sucking mouthparts like an aphid
- Bugscope Team the proboscis is a bit to the left
- 1:11pm
- Bugscope Team what a long proboscis!
- Bugscope Team we must be reaching the end
- Teacher Scot, Cate, Alex, and Annie...THANK YOU! This has been amazing and we've enjoyed the experience. We need to go now.
- Bugscope Team Thank you!
- Bugscope Team You are welcome!
- Bugscope Team thank you! you did a great job
- Bugscope Team your session chat and images are all saved to you member page....
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-087
- Teacher Thank you! Goodbye!
- Bugscope Team thank you for sending in your fun insects and spiders
- Bugscope Team you can review the session chat and images anytime you want, with your class, just vist that site
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-087
- Guest Thank you for allowing me to view their session. It was truely amazing.
- Guest Have a wonderful afternoon!!
- Bugscope Team you too! Thank you!
