Connected on 2010-01-06 10:00:00 from Blue Island, IL, US
- 9:06am
- Guest what is that
- Bugscope Team a wasp body right now
- Bugscope Team mashed
- Guest thanks
- 9:12am
- 9:18am
- 9:32am
- Bugscope Team We are ready to roll. Session is unlocked.
- 9:37am
- 9:42am
- 9:47am
- 9:52am
- Bugscope Team hello myrs. mostyn!
- Bugscope Team mrs.*
- Bugscope Team Good Morning!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Teacher Good morning!
- Bugscope Team this is the sticky pad (the pulvillus) between a fly's claws
- Bugscope Team the tiny setae we see are what help the fly stick to walls -- to vertical and overhead horizontal surfaces
- Teacher neat
- Teacher so is this a fly or a wasp
Bugscope Team this is a fly
- 9:57am
- Bugscope Team we can tell because we can see its haltere, meaning it has two wings; wasps and bees have four wings
- Bugscope Team the halteres beat opposite the beats of the two wings and keeps things balanced
- Bugscope Team take the mag lower if you would like
- Bugscope Team this looks like part of the tibia
- Teacher what are the thicker parts
- Bugscope Team we're looking at some of the spines
- Bugscope Team or bristles
- Bugscope Team they are likely mechanosensory -- they are sensitive to touch
- Teacher they want to see the head... how do i get there? : )
- Bugscope Team this is the head; I clicked on preset 4
- 10:02am
- Teacher can you do that again... sorry
- Bugscope Team let us know if the presets do not work for you; you should be able to choose from among any of the presets -- the thumbnailed locations to the left of the chat box
- Bugscope Team also, to move around you might find it easier to use click to center than click to drive
- Bugscope Team you can see the compound eye to the left
- Bugscope Team and you can see that it has scales from a moth or butterfly on its surface
- Bugscope Team The scales on the wings of butterflies and moths are what makes them so slippery and dusty.
- Bugscope Team all of the little facets of the eye are called ommatidia
- Teacher is the fly missing an eye or is the fly just turned so we can't see the other eye
Bugscope Team the fly is turned so we can't see the other one right now
- Bugscope Team you can see that this fly has a long extended proboscis
- 10:08am
- Bugscope Team the antennae are on the top there
- Bugscope Team with a kind of spongy part and a branched part
- Teacher what is the divet on the nose part... right in from of the eye
Bugscope Team There is a little indentation with two sort of finger looking things--those are the antennae
- Bugscope Team antennae!
- Teacher what is this
Bugscope Team this is a spiracle. It's a type of breathing hole
- 10:13am
- Bugscope Team insects can open and close their spiracles and thus regulate the amount of air entering or leaving the body
- Bugscope Team Insects don't have noses, and they don't have lungs. They breathe through spiracles that are located all over their bodies. The spiracles are connected to trachea, tubes that carry oxygen to the insect's cells.
- Bugscope Team we are looking inside, and the parts that are glowing are charging up, a little, with electrons
- Bugscope Team this is the head of the fruit fly. its mouth is lower left middle
- Bugscope Team one of its antennae is busted off, and you can see that its eye is either nicely streamlined or shrunken a bit as a result of drying
- Bugscope Team there are probably 2 thousand individual ommatidia in the compound eye
- 10:18am
- Bugscope Team if you had a compound eye you would have very good peripheral vision, and you would also be able to register motion/movement more quickly
- Teacher is this the mouth
Bugscope Team Yes, there is a little piece of flaky stuff on it.
- Bugscope Team seeing changes in the visual field quickly gives flies and many other insects the ability to avoid us grabbing them, for example
- Bugscope Team this fly has sponging mouthparts
- Bugscope Team Many flies have mouths are kind of like a sponge on a straw. They press the spongy part on their food, which soaks up liquid, then they suck the liquid out of the sponge with a tube that is connected to their stomachs.
- 10:24am
- Bugscope Team now we see the cricket's compound eye
- Teacher what is that bump on the top of our screen
Bugscope Team looks to be a bit or dirt or some other type of junk that doesn't belong
- Bugscope Team and we are now looking at part of the thorax, which is like the torso on a person
- Bugscope Team insects are often 'hairier' than we expect, and we often find that they are dirty, although that is not always their fault; they might have gotten dirty after they died
- 10:29am
- Bugscope Team you would think that they were also covered with bacteria, but we do not see bacteria that often
- Bugscope Team to the left you can see one of the claws, now in the low middle
- Bugscope Team and now to the right...
- Bugscope Team what we see now is the bottom of the head, and one of the palps
- Bugscope Team palps are accessory mouthparts that help the insect manipulate and taste its food
- Bugscope Team Cool!
- Teacher is that a bug/
Bugscope Team This is a super close look at an insect
- 10:35am
- Bugscope Team if you look at the micron bar, in the lower left corner of the viewing screen, you can get an idea of the magnification, and if you click on it you can see what the mag is -- data will come up on the screen
- Bugscope Team the long thing there looks like a mold spore
- Bugscope Team sort of football shaped
- Bugscope Team the micron bar reads 21 microns right now. the sort of inverted 'h' is a Greek letter 'mu' that means 'micro.'
- Bugscope Team we can tell, because this beetle does not seem to have any pads of sticky setae, that it is not able to climb smooth surfaces
- Bugscope Team you could compare this to preset 5
- 10:40am
- Bugscope Team yes! as Annie says it could still climb, but it would have to have something to grip
- Bugscope Team these are comparable to taste buds, on your tongue
- Teacher how much bigger are our tastebuds than these
- Bugscope Team I'm not sure. I don't think anyone would be able to give up their tongue here to check :)
- Bugscope Team we can see that these are only a few micrometers long, so you would not be able to see them well with your eyes
- Bugscope Team Yes, these sensilla are quite small. When you look at your tongue in the mirror, you can clearly see the individual sensilla--so I would say that tastebuds are several times larger than these insect taste receptors.
- Bugscope Team this is one of the halteres on the thorax, what is left of it, of the crane fly
- 10:45am
- Bugscope Team the head is to the north
- Bugscope Team the haltere is dried out, a bit; normally it would be plump and round like a boxer's speedbag
- Bugscope Team this is one of the two things that beat opposite of the way the wings beat and thus balance the fly in flight
- Bugscope Team flies have two wings, which is what 'Diptera' means: di (two) ptera (wings).
- 10:50am
- Teacher where did the blood from the wasp go
Bugscope Team Insects don't really have blood like humans do. Their blood doesn't carry oxygen, it only serves an immune function. It is clear or greenish, not red. When the insect dies, the liquid part of the blood evaporates.
- Bugscope Team spider fangs!
- 10:55am
- Bugscope Team Spiders inject their prey with venom, which dissolves the prey's internal organs. The spider then sucks out the dissolved organs like a milkshake, leaving a shell behind.
- Bugscope Team We are looking at the exact center of the spider's back..we were.
- Bugscope Team Pollen grains
- 11:00am
- Bugscope Team here are the antennae of the fly
- Bugscope Team this is salt from wendy's restaurant
- Bugscope Team we can see the cubic structure of the salt crystals; if we were to compare them to sugar, we would find that the sugar crystals are not cubic like this.
- Bugscope Team we like Wendy's salt because it has that cool sculpted appearance.
- 11:06am
- Teacher that was neat... the students got an idea of how zoomed in it goes
- Bugscope Team yes it is difficult to have an idea of scale otherwise, when you are looking at something you don't have a good reference for.
- Bugscope Team The salt crystals give you a good idea of how zoomed in you are
- Bugscope Team this is the shaft of the antenna of the wasp, and here we see just one of the tiny bristles
- Bugscope Team we were at such a high mag (about 90,000x) that the sample got distorted by the electron beam
- Bugscope Team bacteria, if we were to see them, are usually 2 microns (2 micrometers) long
- 11:11am
- Bugscope Team insects get lots of information about their environment from their antennae. in particular they get a lot of scent information through the chemoreceptors that line the antennae
- Bugscope Team this is one of the placoid sensilla
- Bugscope Team OK, everyone, I have to run off to an exciting day of insect science. Thanks for the questions!
- Bugscope Team Good bye!
- Teacher thank you so much! this was great!
- 11:16am
- Bugscope Team Thank you, Mrs. Mostyn.
- Teacher Have a great day : )
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-142/
- Bugscope Team that is the link to your member page, Mrs M
- Teacher awesome
- Bugscope Team See you next time!
