Connected on 2010-01-21 10:00:00 from Balsam Lake, WI, US
- 9:19am
- Bugscope Team this is the painted lady butterfly
- Bugscope Team this is the ant
- Bugscope Team we've got the map
- 9:24am
- 9:30am
- 9:36am
- 9:42am
- 9:47am
- 9:54am
- Bugscope Team hi greg, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team one more preset and then we are ready for you
- Teacher Hello!
- Bugscope Team Good Morning, Greg! Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team okay, we are ready. i've just unlocked the session
- Bugscope Team you should see controls on the right of the image
- Bugscope Team please let us know if you have any questions
- Bugscope Team this is a close-up of an antenna
- Teacher The kids say this is awesome!
- Bugscope Team great!
- Bugscope Team please let us know when you have questions
- Bugscope Team we have two entomologists this morning!
- Teacher Great, hello!
- 9:59am
- Bugscope Team Hi!
- Teacher Kids, What is that circle at the bottom?
Bugscope Team It's the base of a seta that broke off, likely
- Bugscope Team the antenna is used for sensing things in the insects environment
- Teacher What is a seta?
- Bugscope Team all insects have tiny hairs called setae or bristles or trichae or spines that help them sense their environment
- Bugscope Team setae look like bug hairs, but they are not quite like human hairs. setae (pronounced see-tee) are sensory things, that help insects to sense their environment
- Bugscope Team They're like hairs, but with nerves inside.
- Bugscope Team seta = singular. setae = plural.
- Bugscope Team (so a haircut would hurt if you were an insect!)
- Bugscope Team the setae can be touch sensory, or they can collect smells (chemosensory), or they can register hot/cold
- Teacher Thanks!
- Bugscope Team Some setae can serve a defensive function (but then technically, I guess they would be spines in that case)
- Bugscope Team This is the surface of an antenna, so it's likely there are several of the different kinds of sensory setae here
- Bugscope Team The insect's whole body is covered in setae. There are more of them on the sensory parts (like antennae or mouthparts), but as you look around on the scope, you'll see them everywhere.
- Bugscope Team you can change the mag, up or down, or drive (using click to drive is better), or change contrast/brightness from your school
- 10:05am
- Bugscope Team if you want to see another bug, you can click on any of the 14 presets to the lower right
- Bugscope Team you are controlling a $600,000 electron microscope. and let us know if you have any problems driving
- Teacher Kids, is this the rear end of the skin?
- Bugscope Team You know, I am not sure where this is. Why don't you try to reduce the magnification to see where we are
- Bugscope Team That button is in the upper right corner of the screen
- Bugscope Team Yes, that's the back-end of the shed mealworm skin
- Bugscope Team That might be the minimum....yep you were right. It looks like the end of the mealworm abdomen
- 10:10am
- Bugscope Team Whoops, gave away the answer, sorry I misread
- Bugscope Team So what we're looking at now is not a live insect, but the remains of a molt. Insects have to shed their skin to get larger, because the exoskeleton doesn't grow or stretch like our own skin.
- Teacher The kids each have taken care of two mealworms
- Bugscope Team Travelling up, these are some more body sections. They'
- Bugscope Team Oh, great! So you guys know all about molting.
- Teacher and have observed their life cycle!
- Teacher Yes
- Bugscope Team They've distorted here because it's hollow on the inside and the exoskeleton hasn't held it's shape
- Teacher They say it looks like a paper bag up close!
- Bugscope Team It does! And it's really not that much different. If you were small, you could probably use the molted skin to carry things around. ;)
- Bugscope Team That was the claw on the end of a leg of the mealworm
- Bugscope Team One of the reasons that entomologists think that many insects look so different as larvae and adults is because having different body forms allows them to specialize during different times in their lives. When they are larvae, they eat and eat and eat. And they can't mover very far and they can't find mates. All that eating allows them to bulk up when they are young so that they can focus on flying around and finding mates when they are adults.
- 10:15am
- Bugscope Team You can see two especially large setae, serving as spines, to the lower--left
- Teacher Thanks!
- Bugscope Team The legs of most insects are tipped with claws, but they are mostly used for holding onto rough surfaces. They look nasty up close like this, but it's not so bad when they're walking on you.
- Teacher What is a spiracle?
- Bugscope Team Spiracles are openings into the insect's
- Bugscope Team Sorry - wrong key!
- Bugscope Team Openings into the insect's "tracheal system" - this is a system of tubes inside the body that are filled with air, and through which the insect breathes.
- Bugscope Team Spiracles are small holes in the exoskeleton through which air can diffuse, allowing the insects to breath. They don't have muscles like our diaphragm to draw in air so their breathing is less efficient than ours, one of the things that limits their size
- Bugscope Team Most insect blood does not carry oxygen like ours does--so oxygen has to reach each individual cells via the tracheal system
- Bugscope Team On the other hand, they don't breath and eat through the same place - so they never have to worry about choking. It has its upside.
- Teacher Great information
- Teacher Wow!
- 10:21am
- Bugscope Team The spiracles are all up and down the body, usually in a line along the middle. You can see them with just your eyes on large grasshoppers - take a look next time you catch one.
- Bugscope Team Now we're looking at the surface of a fly's compound eye.
- Teacher What are the little bumps on the eye?
Bugscope Team Each bump is an ommatidium
- Bugscope Team Now we're seeing several individual facets of a compound eye which are called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team Ommatidia a 'simple' eyes - they can catch ("see") one photon. Like rods and cones in our own retinas.
- Bugscope Team Each ommatidium has a lens like our eye and forms a simple image, then the fly's brain combines the images from all of the ommatidia
- Teacher How many do they have?
Bugscope Team It depends on the insect. The more important vision is to its life, the more ommatidia. It can range from many thousand (like this fly, or a dragonfly) to just five or six.
- Bugscope Team Some insects that live underground actually have no ommatidia--they are blind
- 10:26am
- Bugscope Team In that case, the insects likely rely on chemical signals to find their way around.
- Bugscope Team Thus, all the hairs that we saw earlier.
- Bugscope Team This is right above the mouth palps (little "hands") on the Cricket, maybe Rob or Annie will know what it is
- Teacher What are the hairs sticking out?
- Bugscope Team Could be the clypeus--which is kind of like an upper lip
- Bugscope Team The hairs could be sensory, but they seem a little small for that. Perhaps for helping to sop up liquids or food, like a broom.
- Bugscope Team Greg, if you zoom out you can see it in context with the rest of the mouth (minus button in the Magnify control)
- Bugscope Team Once you start driving, you can click again in the image to stop driving.
- 10:31am
- Teacher Can you tell what part of the cricket this is?
Bugscope Team I am fairly sure this is the middle of the prothorax. You can decrease the magnification to check
- Bugscope Team It's hard to say where without seeing it at lower magnification, but I spy part of a leg along the right edge of the image
- Teacher Thanks!
- Bugscope Team Now we're seeing the mouth of a butterfly - or rather, the proboscis.
- Teacher This is the proboscis?
Bugscope Team It is!
- Bugscope Team These are held coiled up, like a length of rope, underneath the head of the butterfly.
- Teacher okay
- Bugscope Team You can see the coil very well from this perspective - pretty cool! The tip of the proboscis is in the middle-right.
- Teacher They say it looks like a science fiction movie!
- Bugscope Team To extend the proboscis, they pump blood into it. It is sort of like those party horns that you blow and they uncurl.
- 10:37am
- Bugscope Team They use this to reach deep inside flowers and suck out the nectar.
- Bugscope Team Although if you want to hear some science fiction - there are some moths that use it to suck blood! Luckily they live on the other side of the world.
Bugscope Team I saw a talk on those moths at the Entomology Meeting this past year. They think they evolved from moths that used the proboscis to suck the juice of fruit.
- Teacher Cool
- Teacher Is this the eye above?
Bugscope Team Definitely looks like it. If you zoom in, we will know for sure if we see the ommatidia.
- Bugscope Team I watched a video of the moth sucking blood from someone's thumb. The author of the talk said it was "uncomfortable".
- Bugscope Team (Disclaimer: the blood-sucking moths are very rare and are only found in remote parts of Russia. Have no fear of local moths)
- Bugscope Team And there they are!
- Bugscope Team We have a compound eye!
- Teacher Wow
- Bugscope Team Since there are so many, we can assume that vision is very important for the butterfly. And that makes sense, because they have to find flowers.
- Bugscope Team Excellent! You can see plenty of ommatidia and lots of long hairs from between ommatidia, a common feature of moths
- Teacher yes
- 10:42am
- Bugscope Team We're still looking at the butterfly, but these are the scales that cover the wings.
- Bugscope Team Right now we're zoomed on a tiny part of a single scale.
- Bugscope Team These scales are pretty amazing. The size of the features you're seeing here (as indicated by the scale bar in the lower-left), are much smaller than 2 microns, probably closer to several hundred nanometers, or about the same size as the wavelength of light
- Teacher Wow that is small!
- Bugscope Team A light microscope cannot see features this small, so this is where the higher resolution of an electron microscope is very valuable
- Bugscope Team Now we are seeing a few of the scales together.
- Bugscope Team The scales give the butterfly wings their colors, and also make them slippery.
- 10:47am
- Bugscope Team The slippery part is helpful if it hits a spider web - instead of catching the moth or butterfly, it catches a bunch of wing scales.
- Bugscope Team That's also why your fingers look dusty if you handle one.
- Bugscope Team If you have every tried to pick up a butterfly, you know how hard they are to hold onto. They cover your fingers with dust. Those scales help the butterfly to escape.
- Bugscope Team You can see these scales starting to get brighter. That's a phenomenon called "charging", and happens because the sample is electrically grounded. The electrons used to image the sample are building up a charge on the surface, and as they do the image brightens like that
- Teacher Interesting!
- Bugscope Team We coat the samples with a super-fine layer of metal (gold and palladium) in order to make them electrically conductive, but scales and fine hairs are especially difficult to coat
- Bugscope Team Now we're looking at the underside of an insect larva.
- Guest Hi everyone! Sorry for lurking there for a minute. Scott emailed me to let me know that you would be using an ant and a fly we sent in from WT. I am enjoying all of the different bugs, too.
- Bugscope Team His head (and mouth) is towards the top.
- Teacher We use these for ice fishing bait
- Bugscope Team No problem Mrs. V.
- Bugscope Team Hi Mrs. V! We saw an eye from that fly a little earlier.
- Teacher great!
- Guest I feed these to my blue-tongued skink and my leopard gecko.
- Bugscope Team Unfortunately it looks like this wax worm larva is a bit dirty, so the surface is obscured a bit.
- Guest I saw the fly eye! Really cool!
- Bugscope Team You can still see the little prolegs...well, you could
- Teacher ooooooooh
- Bugscope Team The electron microscope only sees the surface of the sample, as opposed to a light microscope where light would go right through an oily or waxy coating. With the electron microscope we just slee a smooth surface of grime
- Guest Rob, we do a bug-tasting day in 6th grade. I would love to have the waxworm "recipe" if there is one or frying method.
Bugscope Team As I recall, we fry them in oil and butter, and add salt. It's like popcorn.
- 10:52am
- Teacher Here is the house fly wing
Bugscope Team We are super zoomed in
- Guest Yum! ;-) Thanks.
- Bugscope Team This is an extreme close-up of a row of larger spine-like setae along the edge of the fly's wing. I find the intricuit patterns on the individual seta fascinating
- Bugscope Team Yes, it is really interesting how they are put together--how the proteins and chitin line up to form the setae and spines.
- Bugscope Team The patterns are so tiny, it's easy to imagine they have some sort of unusual physical property which is important to the insect. Maybe it affects the flow of air, maybe it affects the way water beads up...
- Bugscope Team This is the very edge of the wing
- Teacher We need to go but we thank you very much this was great!!!!
- Guest Whoa! Whe does the housefly have so many setae on its wings? I always imagined them to be smooth. How wrong can you get. :-)
Bugscope Team They probably help the wing to be more aerodynamic. The middle, thin part of the wing doesn't have any nerves, so those tiny little hairs probably don't have a sensory function
- Teacher We have learned so much and this is so cool!!!
- Teacher Great job!!!
- Bugscope Team Really glad to have you on Greg!
- Guest Sorry, I didn't know you were ending. THanks so much for letting me sit in!
- Bugscope Team Yes, thanks for joining is Mrs. V
- 10:57am
- Bugscope Team No problem, Mrs. V - and check the web for some of those bug recipes, there are a lot of things out there.
- Bugscope Team There is a book called "Man Eating Insects" that talk all about entomophagy by people
- Bugscope Team Mrs. V, I would offer to let you drive around and see your ant for a bit longer, but unfortunately I'm the only one able to shut down the 'scope and I have to take off
- Bugscope Team Greg, thank you and your students for all your questions!!
- Guest THanks so much for answering my questions! My students are still talking about their Bugscope experience as being one of the best things they have sone in school! THanks again!
- Bugscope Team Actually, Mrs V, someoen else jsut came by. Do you want to control for a few minutes?
- Guest I appreciated being able to sit in at all! THanks for all your help. Bye!
- Guest SUre thing!
- Bugscope Team All right everyone. Over and out from California!!
- Bugscope Team Alright, you should have the controls!
- Bugscope Team Annie, Rob, thanks so much!
- Guest Sweet!
- Bugscope Team No problem. Don't have too much fun without us ;)
- Bugscope Team Mrs V, I have to take off, but Alex should be on in a few to shut-down when you're done. Just leave him a message letting him know when you're done
- Guest OK, I will do that--THanks a bunch!
- 11:02am
- Guest Looking at the the ant's antenna now
- Guest Base of ant's antenna
- Guest Hi Alex. If you are ready to shut her down I can be done. I am just poking around looking at an ant we sent in that didn't make it on our stub last week.
- 11:07am
- Bugscope Team ok now problem, please go ahead
- Bugscope Team we can give you another few minutes at least
- Guest I don't want to take up your time so please let me know when you would like me to be done.
Bugscope Team no problemo, i'll come back in about 5 minutes
- Guest Cool!
- 11:13am
- 11:18am
- 11:23am
- Guest So much of this looks like art!
- Guest Thanks for letting me drive for an extra bit of time, Alex! I really enjoyed it! Have a great day! Bye!
- 11:28am
- Guest THis is addictive....but I really have to go. Thanks again!
- Guest OK, for real now. Bye!
- 11:35am
- Bugscope Team ok, gotta go, nice session everyone
