Connected on 2010-04-07 11:30:00 from Hood River, OR, US
- 10:13am
- Bugscope Team pumping down. early
- 10:29am
- Bugscope Team starting presets...
- 10:36am
- 10:42am
- 10:48am
- 10:54am
- 11:03am
- Bugscope Team presets done, we are ready
- 11:10am
- 11:15am
- Bugscope Team welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Hi Christy!
- Bugscope Team welcome to bugscope
- 11:20am
- Bugscope Team let us know when you have questions
- Bugscope Team can you see all of the chatbox, and the controls, and the presets?
- 11:28am
- Bugscope Team Hi Columbia!
- Guest Hi. Thanks for letting us join. We have a session scheduled in a few week. I can see a small chatbox.
- Bugscope Team Columbia you may wish to expand your screen, or change your screen resolution
- Bugscope Team welcome welcome. we are about to start a session with Wyeast Middle School, but we can answer any questions you may have, just ask away
- Guest What is a Tenent Setae?
Bugscope Team they are special hairs on some insects that are found by their "foot". They help the insect walk on walls or other vertical surfaces
Bugscope Team The setae together form the pulvillus, a pad near the claw/foot of some insects which often has an adhesive on it to help them stick to walls and other surfaces
- Guest Thanks. We're looking forward watching the middle school session.
- Bugscope Team ms. hillen, are you having any problems? we are ready for you anytime
- 11:33am
- Guest Whats an aphid?
Bugscope Team they are a plant pest that you sometimes see flying around or eating leaves. They are small true bugs, which means they have a proboscis used to eat liquids
- Teacher We are up and running. Yes we see the controls
Bugscope Team great! go ahead and control the scope as you wish, try clicking on a preset, or increase the magnification. and just start asking us any questions you have
- Bugscope Team great!
- Bugscope Team aphids can also migrate long distances, mainly by riding the winds
- Bugscope Team ladybugs like to eat them. they help keep their populations under control
- Bugscope Team (even though to me, the ladybugs are pests too since I have to vacuum them up all the time)
- Bugscope Team some aphids form a symbiotic relationship with ants where the aphid secretes a sugary substance which the ants eat, and in return the ants protect and transport them -- almost like a herd of sheep
- Teacher what kind of animal is this on
Bugscope Team this is an aphid we found on a japanese beetle. They are a type of true bug and they are a pest to plants
- 11:39am
- Teacher do u always find aphids on japenese beatels
Bugscope Team no we don't. I don't know how it happened, but they got stuck together
- Teacher do you know how they got together?
Bugscope Team it's possible they died together or when we got them they got a little jumbled and then got stuck together
- Bugscope Team aphids are softbodied, like spiders and dustmites. so when they die, if we did not preserve them in ethanol and then critical point dry them, they shrivel up
- Bugscope Team some aphids fly, but many, probably most, do not
- 11:44am
- Bugscope Team see the fruit fly's compound eyes, and its antennae?
- Bugscope Team the antennae have am thick pad-like component and a branched component that is a little hard to see now
- Bugscope Team Compound eyes are really cool, they are made up of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of individual facets, called ommatidia, each one has a lens in it
- Teacher Jess wants to know how many eyes it has
Bugscope Team the fruit fly has two compound eyes that have hundreds of individual lenses, and it also has, as Alex said, simple eyes, which are called ocelli. There are three ocelli on the back of the head. We can just see one of them, as a little dome-like bump.
- Bugscope Team some insects also have simple eyes (single lens eyes) in addition to compound eyes, or in replace of, and some bugs don't have any eyes at all, like some ants
- Guest Where are the antenna on this insect?
Bugscope Team fly antennae are different then other insects'. They have 2 parts to their antennae (found between their eyes). They have a pad and a branching part.
- Teacher how can they not have any eyes and fly or walk?
Bugscope Team because some ants can smell so good, they don't need eyes to know where they are going. and the ants smell with those hair like things, they are called setae (pronounced see-tee)
- 11:50am
- Bugscope Team See the bump on the back of the head? That is one of the simple eyes, or ocelli.
- Bugscope Team (it's near the center of the image)
- Bugscope Team Ants use their antennae much more, generally, than they use their eyes. Most of the chemical signals they get from the environment are collected by the antennae.
- Teacher we see it
- Bugscope Team now we are centered on the antenna, which has the furry base and the branched part as well
- Bugscope Team the antenna is kind of compact
- Bugscope Team you can see the ommatidia -- the individual facets of the compound eye -- much better now
- Bugscope Team and check out the setae (hairs) in between the ommatidia, those hairs are thought to help it fly by sensing wind speed and direction
- Bugscope Team and we just moved the microscope controls so you can see the ommatidia better now
- Teacher what are they
- Bugscope Team please feel free, Ms. Hillen, to drive the microscope yourself. Also, if you like you may choose a preset at any time.
- Bugscope Team An 'ommatidium' is what a single one of those lenses is called.
- Bugscope Team for example: when you swap at a small fly, a slight change in wind/pressure will advance in front of you hand, and those setae will feel the air move, and then tell the fly brain to get out, quick! and then it fly's away and annoys you another day...
- 11:55am
- Bugscope Team you can see that there are hundreds of ommatidia
- Teacher what does the ommatidia do
Bugscope Team they are thought to each get in image and then send them to the brain to get assembled into an image
- Bugscope Team and that's why a fly swatter works so well, a swatter has holes in it, so it doesn't move as much air as it's swatting the fly, so the fly can't tell anything is coming, and then: SQUISH. RIP fly
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes you would be better able to gauge motion -- you would be able to respond more quickly to someone trying to swat you
- Bugscope Team each ommatidia has a lens in it
- Bugscope Team and also --- if you had compound eyes, note that they curve around the head in many insects. that makes the insect have better peripheral vision than we do.
- Bugscope Team Compound eyes also allow for a range of vision (sometimes nearly 360 degrees) that's impossible to achieve with two regular eyes
- Bugscope Team this is a moth scale
- Bugscope Team now we are imaging a single scale from a moth, and now more scales, up close
- Bugscope Team moth's have these scales, which are lightweight
- Bugscope Team when you feel the wing of a butterfly or moth, and it feels silky, you are feeling these tiny feather-like, shingle-like scales
- Bugscope Team Some new research also suggests that compound eyes simplify the identification of motion, allowing them do complicated visual processing with a very tiny brain
- Teacher why do moths have scales?
Bugscope Team As alex said below, the scales can help them escape if they hit a sticky spider web. The scales will be shed, releasing them
- Bugscope Team the scales feel like powder
- 12:00pm
- Teacher what makes moths so water repilant?
Bugscope Team many insects are water repellent to some extent. they have a kind of waxy surface on the exoskeleton that does not allow water to stick
Bugscope Team I just looked up a research paper saying that moth wings are hydrophobic (water repelling) due to a complex interaction between the shapes, structures, and materials the wing is made out of. The hydrophobicity keeps them from getting stuck to things by capillary action and gives them a self-cleaning property that researchers are interested in trying to copy for man-made materials
- Bugscope Team moths, butterflies, silverfish, mosquitoes, and some weevils and beetles have scales
- Teacher how many times can a moth mate in its life time? asked kyle
Bugscope Team I think most moths will mate only one time during their life, which is usually no more than a few months. We will check to ensure that is correct.
- Bugscope Team most moths are pests. They eat plants and clothing as caterpillars
- Bugscope Team Scot is right, they only mate once and then they die
- 12:06pm
- Teacher ok. ~kyle
- Bugscope Team moth's are closely related to butterflies, and they have a very large array of species, between 150,000 and 250,000!
- Bugscope Team there are thousands of moth species yet to be named and described
- Bugscope Team tell Kyle we have found so far that often the female mates one time, but the male may mate more than once. There are so many species of moths that it is likely there are some, for example in the Tropics, that mate and lay eggs more than once.
- Teacher are moths drawn to light because they think it's a mating source? ~kyle
Bugscope Team no, moths respond to pheromones, generally, when they mate. pheromones are chemicals in the air, like perfume in many ways
- Teacher Did someone grow this salt crystal?
Bugscope Team the salt crystal is from a packet of salt we got at a Wendy's restaurant. we think, but we do not know for sure, that the salt has a tiny bit of anti-clumping compound added to it. so the salt (sodium chloride) still forms cubic crystals, but they have this cool incised pattern because of the anticlumping agent
- Bugscope Team moths orient themselves with respect to the moon, for example, and when they see a light they get very confused.
- Bugscope Team I'm not sure about moths, but some insects are drawn to light because they're actually looking for water -- their brains are programmed to think that bright lights must be reflections off the surface of a body of water
- Bugscope Team it isn't completely understood why moth's are attracted to light. however, moths are nocturnal, and it is believed they might use the moon to help them fly strait, it is a technique called transverse orientation
- 12:12pm
- Bugscope Team transverse orientation is the process of maintaining a constant angular relationship to a bright celestial light, such as the Moon, they can fly in a straight line. (from wikipedia)
- Teacher Any idea what the agent is?
- Bugscope Team I was thinking maybe a small amount of sodium sulfite.
- Teacher OOPS! We have an early release so my class is ending earlier today. Thank you for your time
- Bugscope Team thanks for using bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Thank You! See you tomorrow!
- Bugscope Team ms. chillen, remember, all the chat and images are saved to your member page
- Bugscope Team rxl stopped, session disabled, locked, nice session everyone
