Connected on 2010-03-04 08:45:00 from Porter, TX, US
- 7:45am
- Bugscope Team pumping down...
- 7:55am
- 8:00am
- Bugscope Team Good morning, Jenn!
- Bugscope Team I am starting to make the presets.
- 8:07am
- 8:13am
- 8:21am
- 8:27am
- Bugscope Team Jenn I am almost done. Be right back!
- 8:32am
- Teacher Hello! Are you there?
- Bugscope Team Yes
- Bugscope Team Just got back
- Bugscope Team Jenn I just unlocked the session so that you cna drive if you'd like
- Teacher Hello! Are you there?
- Bugscope Team yes!
- Bugscope Team Can you see the chat?
- Bugscope Team you may need to change your screen resolution to get the whole interface on your screen
- 8:41am
- Teacher hello
- Bugscope Team Hi Jenn
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-165/
- Teacher Hello! What insect is this?
- Bugscope Team This is a millipede that you sent.
- Bugscope Team it looks like a super long rolypoly
- Bugscope Team You sent us a lot of different insects. Great job on that!
- 8:46am
- Bugscope Team you can see its head, where its antenna was (that hole in its head), and some of its legs.
- Bugscope Team I am going to take you to a fruit fly
- Bugscope Team let us know when the image comes in
- Teacher What is the most common insect you get? That's a cool fruit fly
Bugscope Team house flies or spiders
- Bugscope Team you should see a tiny fly waving at you
- Bugscope Team well, and lately a lot of ladybugs
- Bugscope Team they were pretty bad this year. I've been cleaning them up from my house all winter
- Teacher Hello fly! cool eye! I'll be typing kids questions and commnets. Jenn
- Bugscope Team this is the compound eye, a little closer, and you can see the antenna on the left
- Teacher Awesome!
- Bugscope Team now we see a few facets (ommatidia) of the compound eye
- Bugscope Team and you see a bunch of bristles, or setae, sticking up between the ommatidia
- Bugscope Team the ommatidia are the individual lenses of the eye
- Bugscope Team and tthe setae that are sticking up are sensory -- they help the fly judge the speed and direction of the wind
- 8:51am
- Bugscope Team it depends on the insect, with fruit flies it's hard to tell
- Bugscope Team with houseflies, the females often have their eyes far apart, and those of the males are close together
- Bugscope Team The earwig you sent us is a girl, for instance, because its pincers are straight
- Teacher Oh!
- Bugscope Team if an insect has a stinger or an ovipositor (which is a stick-like egglaying device), it is a female
- Teacher What are the speckles on its eye?
- Bugscope Team male earwig pincers are curved
- Bugscope Team most bees, wasps, and ants you see are females because they do all the work
- Bugscope Team yeah the males are kind of lazy
- Teacher Can you tell how big the fruit fly is?
Bugscope Team now that we took the magnification down, you can use the micron bar, which is now in mm, in the lower left of the screen, to estimate how long the fruit fly is
- Bugscope Team some of what we see on the eye is dirt, but that is not the fruit fly's fault, necessarily. it might've happened after the fruit fly died
- Teacher Looks like its dancing :)
- Teacher How many eggs can fruit fly lay in one year?
Bugscope Team The female fruit fly will lay about 500 eggs. Fruit flies don't live for very long.
- 8:58am
- Teacher How long do they live?
Bugscope Team about 30 days. They can mate more than once it seems.
- Bugscope Team I just moved us to the flea
- Teacher Scary Looking
- Bugscope Team Hi all!
- Bugscope Team you can see the eyespot, to the right
- Bugscope Team Hi Annie!
- Teacher Yes! Cool Eye
- Bugscope Team so the adults can lay up to 1000 total in their life span.
- Bugscope Team Annie is our entomologist, and she is up early to help. She lives in California.
- Teacher Thank you for being up so early for us Annie
- Bugscope Team the biting part of the flea is to the left
- Bugscope Team California, where it is sunny, but not warm
- Bugscope Team No problem!
- Teacher What are the fibers around the flea?
- Bugscope Team and you can see that the flea has a bunch of fibers, maybe plant fibers, around it
- Bugscope Team heh
- Bugscope Team we are not sure what they are -- maybe Cate knows
Bugscope Team it's from a cotton ball
- Bugscope Team This is cool
- Bugscope Team this is one of the biting parts, called laciniae
- Bugscope Team looks llike a chainsaw blade
- Bugscope Team the fleas are from Annie that she found on a dog I believe?
Bugscope Team Hahaha, I found it on me!!!! We had a flea infestation two summers ago. There was a squirrel living in our roof and it brought its friends with it.
- Teacher Does it hurt its prey?
Bugscope Team well it hurts to get bitten, and fleas can transmit diseases.
- 9:03am
- Teacher Can fleas live very long?
Bugscope Team their eggs can remain dormant for years, and then when you disturb them the new fleas pop right out
- Teacher What diseases can fleas transmit?
Bugscope Team Fleas can transmit a form of typhus and they were responsible for the spread of the bubonic plague!
- Bugscope Team they could spread the plague from rats to humans
- Bugscope Team Flea bites are very itchy and can get infected.
- Teacher How can you prevent this? Would insect repellent work?
Bugscope Team I am not sure that insect repellent really works on fleas. They don't really have directed movement a lot of the time, they sort of hop wildly towards warm bodies. The best way to prevent flea bites is to not have fleas.
- Teacher Can flies fly? Or do they just jump?
Bugscope Team Fleas have no wings. It is a secondary loss of wings--their ancestors had wings, but fleas lost them as they adapted to a life of sucking blood.
- Bugscope Team fleas just jump, but they have powerful legs
- Teacher looks fat like a walrus
- Bugscope Team heh it is very flat
- Bugscope Team vacuuming regularly will help keep the fleas at bay
- 9:08am
- Bugscope Team now you can see the legs, which are like little jackrabbit legs
- Bugscope Team they can hop very high and far -- more than a few feet
- Bugscope Team flea powder and flea collars on your pets will help
- Teacher How long can the legs grow?
Bugscope Team This is an adult flea, so they don't get much larger than this.
- Teacher How large can a flea get?
Bugscope Team I am trying to think of the largest flea I have seen...they are about the size of a pin head.
- Teacher What animals eat fleas?
Bugscope Team I am not sure that fleas make up the majority of any animals diet. Things like rodents and raccoons and monkeys will eat the fleas when they groom themselves, but I think that is just because they have no where else to put them.
- Bugscope Team yeah they do seem to get chunky
- Teacher What is this pic? Looks like a mustache.
Bugscope Team The Latin name of this flea is translated as "comb head"
- Bugscope Team The average flea ranges in size from 1/12 to 1/6 inch long
- Bugscope Team I would eat them too if I had no place to put them.
- Bugscope Team A spider will eat a flea. Little birds if the can catch them.
- Bugscope Team this is the head
- Bugscope Team pointed upward
- 9:13am
- Bugscope Team yeah, if it's between a flea eating me, or me eating a flea.... i'll eat the flea.
- Bugscope Team they would probably get caught in your teeth
Bugscope Team they are pretty small
- Teacher Yuck! Scott
- Teacher Looks like smiley face :)
- Bugscope Team you know they say you should always floss
- Bugscope Team look at all of the eyes!
- Teacher What is this? some kids say looks like a butt
Bugscope Team Kinda, yeah. The butt looking part is actually the spider's mouth. The bumps are its eyes.
- Teacher hairy butt that is
- Bugscope Team the part that looks like a butt -- the divided part -- is the chelicerae. They spread apart, and at the base are the fangs.]
- Bugscope Team it is hairy! the hairs are important because they help the spider sense vibrations
- Teacher Is this what holds the fangs to make it move?
Bugscope Team yes the two separate parts below hold the fangs, which point toward each other -- inward
- Bugscope Team most spiders, despite having all of those eyes, do not see very well
- Bugscope Team those hairs are called setae (pronounced see-tee)
- Teacher How can you tell a girl spider or a boy spider?
Bugscope Team often a girl spider is larger, and sometimes much much larger
- 9:18am
- Teacher How do they communicate?
Bugscope Team well, the hairs (setae) help the spider to sense things, that is communication. but they also, probably, have chemical sensory hairs as well. i know ants do. some ants don't have any eyes at all, they only communicate through their setae
- Teacher Now you can tell what it is
- Bugscope Team also, in front of the face you see palps, and those palps are usually more narrow on a female.
- Bugscope Team the head and body are one part, called a cephalo (the head) thorax (the body). Cephalothorax.
- Bugscope Team the big round part at the back is the spider's abdomen, and that is where the spinnerets are that produce the silk -- the web.
- Bugscope Team this spider has either lost its abdomen, or it has shrunken quite a bit
- Teacher How much silk can a spider produce?
Bugscope Team it depends on the spider, but one thing spiders can do is recycle their web by eating it
- Bugscope Team the cephalothorax is hardened, like the exoskeleton of an insect, but the abdomen is soft
- Teacher Can you tell what type of spider it is?
- Bugscope Team Spiders have really interesting communication actually. LIke Alex says, spiders communicate by vibration--the male of some species will actually pluck the strands of a female's web to let her know that he is there (and not to eat him, please). In other species male spiders tap on hard surfaces, like the ground, playing a drum song to females. In jumping spiders, which have really good vision, the males wave their front legs for females--the legs have all this crazy UV-reflecting setae on them.
- Teacher What makes the web sticky?
- Bugscope Team we aren't sure what kind of spider this is
- Bugscope Team we aren't very good about identifying spiders
- 9:24am
- Bugscope Team I think wolf spiders and jumping spiders are common to find in houses
Bugscope Team And pholcid spiders--the cobweb spiders.
- Bugscope Team some of the silk is sticky, and that is the way the proteins are that make it up. and some of the web is not sticky
- Bugscope Team if a spider got caught in its web it could eat its way out
- Teacher What is the main prey of a spider?
Bugscope Team Most spiders are generalist predators. They will eat anything that is smaller than them, well, not even that. They will eat anything they can catch!
- Teacher What kind of bugs will the spider not eat?
Bugscope Team they will not eat Monarch butterflies because those butterflies eat milkweed, and the milkweed is poisonous to many other animals
- Bugscope Team oh I didn't know that annie. Cool. I think I have a lot of those because I've been getting a lot of random webs
Bugscope Team They look like a Tim Burton creation from Beetlejuice
- Bugscope Team not sure if someone told you this already, but the moth will often get stuck in a spider web, but can escape by shedding some of its scales
- 9:29am
- Bugscope Team spiders can also, if they sense they have been bitten in one of their legs, leg that leg fall off.
- Teacher How many eggs does a spider lay?
Bugscope Team female spiders can lay up to 3000 eggs at a time!
- Teacher Where do spiders mostly live?
Bugscope Team They live everywhere. Different spiders specialize in different places. Some spiders like under rocks and bark. Some like in the garden. The cobweb spiders seem to like dry undisturbed places that are not frequently disturbed, like corners in the garage.
- Bugscope Team and with monarch butterflies, the spiders will often cut them free if they get caught. Their diet of milkweed is often poisonous or just doesnt taste good to other insects.
- Bugscope Team jenn, would you like us to move to something else now? or stay on the spider?
- Teacher We can move on thanks
- Bugscope Team okay, we are moving to a wasp, the compound eye of a wasp
- Teacher Looks like sunglasses
- Bugscope Team heh, yeah, hadn't thought of that before!
- Teacher How long do they live?
Bugscope Team Social waspworkers will live about two months. Social wasp queens will live about a year.
- Bugscope Team isn't it cool,l how the shape of the eye curves around the head?
- Bugscope Team My last response was from the department of redundancy department.
- Bugscope Team notice how the eye is made up of thousands of individual facets - called ommatidia
- 9:34am
- Teacher Can a stinger break off if they sting someone
Bugscope Team the only time the stinger breaks off, is if a honeybee stings a mammal. Their stingers are barbed and get stuck in the skin
- Bugscope Team wow, this is so cool, not sure i've seen an eye like this before
- Bugscope Team this part of the had with the fine setae on it is called the vestiture
- Teacher Why does the eye curve around?
Bugscope Team I don't know if anyone actually knows that--the notched eye is one of the character that you can use to identify wasps in this family
Bugscope Team well, each ommatidium has a lens in it, and that lens is fixed (can't move like our eyes can), so the wasp needs many lens, all pointed in different directions in order to see a large wide angle view
- Bugscope Team oops 'head'
- Bugscope Team I think it is curved in part because the antennae are in the way there
Bugscope Team That is probably true--it was a blind spot.
- Bugscope Team Those were excellent complimentary answers
- Bugscope Team nice shot here, wow
- Bugscope Team Jennden now has control...
- Teacher Hi we lost connection had to relog in as Jennden
Bugscope Team no problemo
- Bugscope Team see that pollen grain?
- Bugscope Team a pollen grain!!!
- Bugscope Team there's the pollen grain
- Teacher It looks like ball with spikes
Bugscope Team right on
- 9:40am
- Teacher How many eyes does a wasp have?
Bugscope Team well, it has two of these large compound eyes, and may also have some simple eyes? but the compound eyes are made up of thousands of individual facets with lens's in them. probably in total 5000-6000 lens's?
- Bugscope Team pollen often looks like this.
- Bugscope Team see how the shape of the facet (called an ommatidium) is in a hexagon? that's because the entire eye curves, and that hexagonal shape allows the facets to be next to one another, but still allow for curvature of the entire eye
- Bugscope Team the wasp has three simple eyes called ocelli
- Bugscope Team if the facets were squares, the curvature wouldn't work too well, there'd be large gaps in between the eye facets
- Teacher what about the stinger?
- Bugscope Team the stinger is broken, but we can drive down there
- Bugscope Team okay, scott is going to drive to the stinger now
- Bugscope Team there's a very good preset of an ant stinger though
- Bugscope Team this is the abdomen...
- Bugscope Team here's the abdomen, where the stinger would come out
- 9:45am
- Bugscope Team so this is a close-p of the stinger, but it is broken
- Bugscope Team close-up i mean
- Bugscope Team and the stinger is here
- Bugscope Team let's go check out an ocellus, a simple eye on the wasp
- Teacher looks like a big wart
- Bugscope Team unlike a compound eye, an ocellus is just a single lens in a single facet
- Bugscope Team you can just barely see a second one 'over the hill' to the left
- Bugscope Team there are three ocelli, and they are in a triangular pattern
- Bugscope Team they help flying insects judge the time of day and where the sun is so they don't get lost
- Bugscope Team since all of the insects we have seen so far do not wear wristwatches
- Bugscope Team ATTACK OF THE KILLER WART!!!
- Bugscope Team ocelli are called simple eyes, compared to the compound eyes
- Teacher Scott and Alex are really funny
- Bugscope Team couldnt see much light if it's all covered up like it is
- Bugscope Team sometimes dirt and grim and stuff gets onto the insects. we call that stuff juju
- Teacher funny name sounds like junk
- 9:50am
- Teacher in three minutes we switch to next class could you put the slide with insect waving?
- Teacher This first class thanks you a lot
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team nice job class, you all did great!
- Teacher Bye my bug friend please keep on for five minutes and see you in 5 minutes:)
- Bugscope Team ok
- Bugscope Team See you soon!
- Bugscope Team We are going to look for the earwig?
- Bugscope Team whoops earwig! heh
- Teacher class wants to take picture with bug waving please leave on that pic for 5 minutes please
- Bugscope Team you got it, no problem. we just wanted to grab a quick preset of the earwig
- Bugscope Team no prob. does this session go all day?
- 9:56am
- Bugscope Team just let us know when you are ready jennden
- Bugscope Team This is an interesting fly head
- Teacher Ready Class Two says hello
- Bugscope Team hi class, welcome to bugscope
- Bugscope Team these are live images from an electron microscope
- Teacher What's up
- Bugscope Team we are now looking at a fruit fly
- Teacher How much does the electron microscope cost? $$$
Bugscope Team it cost about $700,000 in 1998
- Bugscope Team The antennae are the round things in the middle of the head.
- Bugscope Team the scope can magnify up to 700,000x, but for insects like these we stay in the 40x-40,000x range for best results
- Bugscope Team Many flies have so-called aristate antennae. No other insects have antennae like this.
- Bugscope Team the reason all the images from the scope (live images by the way) are black and white is the electron microscope uses electrons to gather the image, not light. color is a property of the frequency of LIGHT. since we have no light in the scope, no color
- Teacher What bug do you frequently scan?
Bugscope Team ants and fruit fly's are common for us, because they have such interesting anatomy
- 10:02am
- Teacher Do you have a centipede to show us?
Bugscope Team we have a millipede that looks a lot like an elongated roly-poly
- Bugscope Team we've also been receiving a lot of ladybugs this year
- Bugscope Team The smallest insects and arthropods are the most interesting for Bugscope
- Bugscope Team we have a millipede
- Bugscope Team this is the front end of the millipede, the head
- Bugscope Team this millipede is huge, so we can't see the whole thing in one image
- Teacher what is the smallest bug you can magnify?
Bugscope Team the smallest insect would be no match for this scope. but on this sample, i think the fleas are the smallest?
- Bugscope Team A millipede is NOT an insect! It is in the class Myriapoda.
- Bugscope Team Not that anyone said that it was an insect
- Bugscope Team some mites are very small as well, smaller than a flea I think
Bugscope Team Yes, mites can be smaller than fleas.
- Bugscope Team and aphids are very small as well
- Teacher How often do you look at bugs?
Bugscope Team we have bugscope sessions about 3 times a week
- Bugscope Team The smallest insects are called fairyflies. They are tiny wasps that lay their eggs inside the eggs of aquatic beetles.
- Teacher what is this?
- Bugscope Team that, i believe, is a spiracle
- Bugscope Team yes alex is right
- Bugscope Team a spiracle on a millipede
- 10:07am
- Teacher Why do some bugs curl up when they die and some don't?
Bugscope Team It has to do with water and "blood pressure." When an insect or other arthropod dies, it looses water very quickly. The water is what keeps insects stretched out and moving normally (think about a water balloon). When the water dries up, the insect sort of deflates.
- Bugscope Team this spiracle is how the millipede breathes
- Bugscope Team insects, and myriapodas, do not breathe through their mouths, instead they have these spiracles. air goes inside and circulates into passages which can distribute the air nutrients into the blood
- Teacher What is the favorite type of bug you like to look at?
Bugscope Team i like mites, because they are bugs that bug other bugs
- Bugscope Team My favorite for Bugscope are fleas and lice. We don't get lice very much.
- Teacher Annie why did you chose to be an entomologist?
Bugscope Team I always liked to be outside and to capture critters, like toads and fireflies, and anything else that didn't run fast enough. When I was in high school, I was very good in my biology classes and thought that I might go into medical research. But, I had an aquatic entomology unit my senior year, and I just knew I wanted to be an entomologist from that moment on.
- Bugscope Team we sometimes get them donated from our secretary that schedules bugscope because her kids get them all the time
- Bugscope Team this is a claw, a fruit fly claw. many insects have claws
- Bugscope Team lice i mean
- 10:12am
- Teacher Like a monster claw
- Bugscope Team argrgrgrg!!! me fruit fly, me have big claw, me use it to bug you!
- Teacher Are there different types of lice?
Bugscope Team yeah there's a few types, like head lice and body lice
Bugscope Team There are TONS of lice. Like Cate said, humans only get two kinds of lice. But there are lice that feed on bird feathers, pig lice, bark lice.
- Teacher what courses did you take in college to prepare you to be an entomologist?
Bugscope Team In college, I was a biology major. I took plant and animal biology, cell biology, microbiology, genetics, evolution, ecology, animal behavior and veterbrate physiology. This is a pretty standard set of classes for a general biology major. I also took two elective entomology classes. When I was in grad school I took all sort of entomology classes.
- Bugscope Team The bird lice are really diverse. I know some entomologists who studied the lice that live on penguins.
- Teacher The kids want to know what do you do with the bugs after you show them on bug scope?
Bugscope Team well, they usually get through out. or we might reuse a sample once or twice. but the insects are RIP, and covered in gold-palladium
- Bugscope Team thrown out, not through out. silly me.
- 10:18am
- Bugscope Team now we are moving to the head of a roly-poly, those are those little critters that roll into a ball when you touch them
- Teacher How long have you all been doing BugScope?
Bugscope Team bugscope has been going on for 11 years now. but this version of the interface is new as of 3 years ago, bugscope 2.0
- Bugscope Team they are NOT insects. they are crustaceans, like craba
Bugscope Team You scooped me ;)
- Teacher Bring on the Roly Poly
- Bugscope Team alex and I arent true entomologiest. We learn about insects by doing Bugscope, which is pretty cool
- Bugscope Team so this roly poly is kinda resting on its back, we are looking at the front of its face
- Bugscope Team Alex and Cate know a lot about insects. I think they know more practical facts than many entomologists!
- Bugscope Team now you can see all the roly poly legs
- Teacher Picture has not changed can't see roly poly just claw
Bugscope Team try clicking refresh (F5)
- Bugscope Team sometimes the communication gets hosed, and a refresh will almost always fix it. hit the F5 button on your keyboard
- Teacher Thanks F5 worked Oh Ahh!
- Bugscope Team great!
- 10:23am
- Bugscope Team and this is the rear-end of the roly poly
- Teacher how can you tell difference between male/female bugs?
Bugscope Team that depends on the insect. Sometimes we can't tell the difference. But usually, like in butterflies, males will be more colorful (kind of like birds), or flies eyes will be different between males and females, or with earwigs females have straight pincers.
- Bugscope Team Female wasps and bees have stingers because they also work as ovipositors. Most of the ants and bees you see are females because they do most of the work
- Bugscope Team Many female insects are fatter and larger than the males. But, it is hard to tell, like Cate says.
- Teacher What is the rarest insect you have every gotten at Bug Scope?
Bugscope Team Occasionally, someone will donate their collection from their graduate level entomology class. Sometimes the collections have uncommon insects.
- 10:28am
- Bugscope Team these are tenent setae on a ladybug
- Teacher How do you know the age of the bug?
Bugscope Team You sort of have to guess. For example, ladybugs have one generation per year. The adults overwinter, they lay eggs, the larvae hatch, grow into adults and then hibernate. So you can extrapolate that most of them are about a year old. They could be younger, of course.
- Teacher What are we looking at now?
Bugscope Team these are ladybug tenent setae, they are hair like structures that help the ladybug stick to surfaces it climbs
- Teacher What is the biggest insect Bug Scope has gotten?
Bugscope Team We got a giant millipede once that made scott scream a little in surprise when he opened the envelope it was sitting in
- Bugscope Team it was really funny
- Teacher What is this?
- Bugscope Team this is a ladybug
- Bugscope Team We ended up cutting it up and using little sections of it because it was covered in mites
- Teacher How many different kind of lady bugs have you gotten?
Bugscope Team Most of the ones that we get are the Asian multicolored ladybeetle. We have used maybe three other species.
- 10:34am
- Teacher Have you ever received a live bug in the mail?
Bugscope Team oh yeah, sometimes they crawl out the the envelope and they are upset!
- Bugscope Team Ugh yeah the giant millipede...
- Bugscope Team hahaha, that is a question for Cate!
- Bugscope Team yeah I dont like getting live insects
- Bugscope Team Live angry antlions
- Bugscope Team we usually will stick them in the freezer to kill them
- Bugscope Team The live insects also will eat their travel companions.
- Teacher Does the color of lady bug's back depend on what type of lady bug it is?
Bugscope Team Usually. The Asian multicolor ladybeetle has many different colors and different numbers of spots. Other ladybugs are more consistent. Sometimes the males and females will have different numbers of spots.
- Bugscope Team cool, these are the internal wings of the ladybug, you know those wings that don't always go back under the outer shell
- Teacher What colors have you seen?
- Bugscope Team Asian multicolored ladybeetles, the ones that are so abundant in the fall and that bite, can be red, yellow, orange.
- Bugscope Team There are lady bugs that are solid black with red spots, there is one species that is white, one that is pinkish. Most of the other beetles in the same family are sort of a boring brown color.
- Teacher Can you show us a spider?
- 10:40am
- Bugscope Team here comes the head of a spider
- Teacher Looks like a hairy cow
- Bugscope Team you can see the ocelli (simple eyes) here, 8 of them, and below that the fangs... mooo...
- Teacher What type of spider is this?
Bugscope Team We are not really sure. I would guess that it is a wolf spider.
- Bugscope Team Spider identification is not my area of expertise
- Bugscope Team let's go look at the detail of a spider leg
- Bugscope Team it is difficult for us to identify spiders, in part because they are often shrunken when we get them
- Bugscope Team this is a striped pattern that also shows up on the head
- Teacher How can you tell difference between male and female spider?
Bugscope Team female spiders are often much larger than males, and if they are the same size the females may be plumper because they carry eggs
- Bugscope Team we have never seen this before and are not sure what its purpose is
- 10:45am
- Teacher How many babies does a spider's egg sac have?
- Bugscope Team also, male spiders often have large pedipalps, or palps, in front of the fangs, and female spiders have finer more narrow palps
- Bugscope Team Annie has to log out; I have to do some entomology. The rest of the Bugscope team will stay right here...but I have to go. Thank you for the good questions!
- Bugscope Team certainly the number of baby spiders varies among species, but one reference tells us there may be 3000.
- Bugscope Team bye bye--sorry to distract from the conversation about spiders!
- Bugscope Team Thank you, Annie!
- Teacher What is this?
- Bugscope Team this is the back of the spider -- the back of the cephalothorax
- Bugscope Team the abdomen is either quite shrunken or missing
- Bugscope Team the cephalothorax is hardened and thicker, like an insect's exoskeleton, but the abdomen is soft and shrinks easily
- 10:50am
- Bugscope Team this is a moth or butterfly scale, and it is right at the junction between the chelicers, or chelicerae, that the spider uses to help it bite
- Bugscope Team this scale has no holes!!!
- Bugscope Team scales usually have holes in between the ribs. but this one doesn't. odd, i've never seen that before
- Teacher looks like a potatoe chip with ridges
Bugscope Team ruffles, now i'm hungry
- Bugscope Team yeah looks just like a ruffles chip
- Teacher What is this?
- Teacher Can you show us another bug?
- Bugscope Team sure, here is a wasp, a compound eye on a wasp
- Bugscope Team there is where one of the antennae was
- Bugscope Team that hole
- Bugscope Team and now we see the other atnenna
- Bugscope Team it is also broken
- 10:55am
- Teacher How many wasp live in one hive?
- Bugscope Team oops I should have said 'antenna'
- Bugscope Team some wasps are solitary, so it varies, of course
- Bugscope Team there are many tiny parasitic wasps that we do not see often
- Bugscope Team here are the wasp mandibles, they help it scope food into it's mouth area
- Teacher Why do wasp and bees dies after they sting oneone?
- Bugscope Team honeybees die because when they sting, the sting is left in your skin, and it rips part of the abdomen open
- Bugscope Team wasps and some other bees can sting repeatedly
- Teacher Five minute break next class comming. Thank you so much! Bye!
- Bugscope Team ok
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- 11:02am
- Bugscope Team the stinger only sticks in mammals
- Bugscope Team I didn't know that.
- Teacher Hello third class is in. Let's start
- 11:07am
- Bugscope Team hi there, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team this is a fruit fly
- Bugscope Team you can see its two compound eyes on either side of its head
- Bugscope Team and the bump sticking out of its mouth area is its proboscis
- Teacher Looks hairy hello there
Bugscope Team yeah, sure does, but those aren't really hairs. they are called setae (pronounced see-tee)
- Teacher What is setae?
Bugscope Team setae(see-tee) is the plural form. For one, it's seta.
- Bugscope Team setae help insects sense their environment. setae can sense movement, taste, temperature, smells, etc.
- Bugscope Team setae are sensory objects on all insects
- Bugscope Team since insects have an outer shell that can't feel (exoskeleton), they need those setae, which stick through the exoskeleton to nerves underneath, to feel their environment
- Bugscope Team even the compound eye has setae
- Bugscope Team each of those bumps is called an ommatidium, each one has a lens in it
- 11:12am
- Bugscope Team those setae are comparable to cat or rat whiskers --- they help the fruit fly feel the force and direction of the wind.
- Bugscope Team so the fly sees thousands of images, but the bug brain puts it all together into one. kinda like how our human brains put two images into one...
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes you would have a better view; people might not be able to sneak up on you so easily
- Bugscope Team also, if you had compound eyes you would be able to register motion more quickly
- Bugscope Team changes in the visual field would show up very quickly
- Bugscope Team here is an ant stinger
- Bugscope Team many ants do not have stingers; they might bit, though
- Bugscope Team bite, that is...
- Teacher Do the stingers have poison?
Bugscope Team fire ants are venomous, but the harvester ant has a very potent sting and is said to be the most venomous insect
- Bugscope Team I think they do have some kind of venom. Sometimes it is formic acid.
- Teacher Is this still the stinger?
- Bugscope Team some ants have, rather than a stinger, a sort of volcano-looking orifice at the tip of the abdomen, which is called a 'gaster' in an ant. that little volcano will spray formic acid
- Bugscope Team yep, this is a close-up of the stinger
- Bugscope Team yes that is the stinger up close
- 11:18am
- Bugscope Team there is a lot of juju on the stinger, perhaps some venom that leaked out
- Teacher Can you die from their bite?
- Bugscope Team most people will not die -- it is just very painful. but some people who are allergic, or who get hundreds of stings, may die
- Bugscope Team Some ants bite and do not sting. Some bite and spray venom on the bitten area. Some bite and inject formic acid with a stinger. Harvester and fire ants bite and sting in a two-part process. The ants will grab hold with their mandibles, and then pivot around, repeatedly stinging and injecting venom. The venom includes an alkaloid poison. Fire ant venom includes an alarm pheromone which chemically alerts other ants in the vicinity.
- Bugscope Team notice the scale bar in the lower left, one um = one micron, that's one millionth of a meter
- Bugscope Team a bacterium -- the rod-shaped kind called bacilli -- is usually about 2 microns long
- Bugscope Team so the very tip of the ant stinger is less than one micron
- Bugscope Team here's an earwig
- Bugscope Team this is a male earwig you sent
- Bugscope Team scott is going to try and find some parasites on this earwig
- 11:23am
- Teacher Do these bugs live in your ears?
- Bugscope Team not mine!
- Bugscope Team earwigs are plant pests
- Bugscope Team and it is sometimes said that they could crawl into your ear, and they could; but mostly they don't
- Teacher Where are the eyes on the earwig?
- Bugscope Team see one now?
- Bugscope Team hi lcjh, welcome to bugscope, we are in a session with jennden
- Bugscope Team this is the compound eye
- Bugscope Team we are looking past one of the palps
- Bugscope Team and notice, setae are all over the place, that's typical for an insect
- Bugscope Team cool, this is an any
- Bugscope Team ant!
- Bugscope Team ant
- Bugscope Team not an any, an ant
- Bugscope Team you can see one of its eyes too
- Bugscope Team and you can see its mandibles
- 11:28am
- Bugscope Team insect mandibles open like a gate, from side to side; not like ours
- Bugscope Team and setae again
- Bugscope Team ah, there's a compound eye!
- Bugscope Team some ants have them, some don't
- Bugscope Team but in general, ants don't need large compound eyes because they have such good sense with their setae, and use chemicals to smell their way around
- Bugscope Team terrestrial insects often have less complex compound eyes compared to flying insects
- Bugscope Team hi cubs, welcome to bugscope, we are in a session with jennden, but feel free to ask a question or two if you need
- Bugscope Team that is the spider's leg
- Bugscope Team if we go to the head, we can see that it has the same striped pattern on it
- Bugscope Team ocelli - simple eyes
- Bugscope Team yeah, there's that pattern, wild, that is cool
- Teacher How old do spiders get and what is the black spot?
Bugscope Team the average life span is 1-2 years. But that is all dependent on the type of spider
- Bugscope Team we have never seen this before. it is possible the dark areas reflect light a different way
- 11:34am
- Bugscope Team the black spot is where there was something on there that came off after the spider was coated with gold palladium
Bugscope Team probably where a small piece of dust blew off after the coating
- Bugscope Team yeah, some spiders can live 20 years, but that's only if they are in human captivity and fed and protected
- Bugscope Team some spiders grow and molt, and some do not
- Teacher How much poison is in a black widow?
- Guest What part of the spider are we looking at? what is the circular structure to the left?
Bugscope Team this is the spider head, between/near the eyes; and that is a piece of dirt of some sort
- Bugscope Team all spiders feed by injecting venom into their prey. the venom dissolves the inner organs of the prey, and the spider sucks it all back out like a milkshake
- Bugscope Team the venom of black widows is a neurotoxin and it may interfere with the nerve impulses to muscle tissue. After being biten from a black widow one may feel painful rigidity in the muscles of the abdomen and a feeling of tightness in the chest.
- Teacher How long is the incubation period on the spider?
Bugscope Team looks like most spider eggs hatch with 30 days, but it varies from species to species
- Bugscope Team in general, the female spider bite is more poisonous than the male, at least that is true for black widows
- 11:39am
- Teacher Do spiders attack only when they feel threatened?
Bugscope Team yes, most spiders are shy, this includes the black widow, but if threatened they will bite
- Bugscope Team Only the female black widow bites humans, and she bites only when disturbed, especially while protecting her eggs.
- Teacher How much is gold palladium?does it have real gold in it
Bugscope Team it costs $390 for a thin disc of it that gets used up after maybe 200 coatings
- Bugscope Team many spiders are territorial, and they will stay in pretty much one place
- Guest What type of spider are we looking at?
Bugscope Team we are not sure cubs
- Bugscope Team it has real gold and real palladium in it; it makes the sample look silver because palladium is silver
- Bugscope Team the samples we are looking at have very fine coats of gold-palladium on them -- only 8 or 10 nanometers
- Bugscope Team yes we are not very good with spiders, and they are often shrunken and hard to recognize
- Bugscope Team that is, we are not good at identifying spiders
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a flea
- Bugscope Team you can see its eye to the right
- Bugscope Team it is sort of caught up in cotton fibers
- 11:44am
- Bugscope Team it is likely it does not see very well
- Teacher Do spiders die after they have babies?
Bugscope Team sometimes they do; really it depends on the species
- Bugscope Team these are the laciniae -- the sharp cutting parts of the flea that help it bite you
- Bugscope Team often they will move back and forth like an electrical steak knife
- Bugscope Team this is one of the ants, and we see the antenna in the foreground
- 11:49am
- Bugscope Team the part of the antenna closest to the head is called the 'scape.'
- Bugscope Team the ant has little combs built into its forelimbs that help it keep its antennae clean
- Bugscope Team here's the abdomen of the ant
- Bugscope Team the ant abdomen is called a gaster
- 11:54am
- Bugscope Team this is its stinger
- Bugscope Team this is a face only a mother could love
- Bugscope Team a pillbug or roly poly or woodlouse. It has many names
- Teacher looks mad
- Bugscope Team now we are face to face with (heh Cate) with a rolypoly
- Bugscope Team yes it does look mad!
- Bugscope Team yeah, he looks like he's saying: "hmmrumph!"
- Bugscope Team you can just barelyl see part of the eye
- Bugscope Team rolypolies are also called sowbugs, pillbugs, and 'woodlice'
- Bugscope Team they are not insects; they are actually crustaceans
- Bugscope Team like crabs and lobsters
- Bugscope Team there are giant ones in the ocean that are the size of a small dog
- Bugscope Team they are also called, with other creatures like the, 'isopods.'
- 11:59am
- Bugscope Team iso means 'the same,' like in an isosceles triangle
- Bugscope Team and pod means 'foot'
- Bugscope Team it's because all 14 of their pointy little feet are the same
- Teacher Thank you for a wonderful day and we will see you tomorrow. Thank you all.
- Bugscope Team all the chat and images from today's session are save to your member page: http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-165
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team cubs and lcjh let us know if you would like to drive a bit
- 12:04pm
- Bugscope Team cubs we just gave you the wheel
- Bugscope Team let us know if you want to drive -- we have been on since early this morning and are about ready to shut things down
