Connected on 2010-04-22 13:15:00 from Krum, TX, US
- 12:32pm
- Bugscope Team We'll need to plug the cable back into the video splitter, because right now the digitizer is plugged in directly
- Bugscope Team Cate says "Thanks, Dude." We seem to have figured it out.
- 12:40pm
- 12:46pm
- Bugscope Team Cute spider
- 12:51pm
- 12:57pm
- 1:03pm
- 1:09pm
- 1:24pm
- Bugscope Team Mrs Martin!
- Bugscope Team welcome to bugscope!
- Teacher Hi there
- Teacher We are all so excited
- Teacher we have a bunch of insect questions to ask you
- Bugscope Team I just talked with the receptionist, sorry -- she may be looking for you
- Bugscope Team hi mrs martin
- Bugscope Team we were concerned that we had not reminded you of the session
- Bugscope Team but yes we are ready to go!
- Bugscope Team you have control of the microscope so you can click on a preset to move to a different insect or change the mag from here
- Bugscope Team you can also drive manually, with click to center being the easiest to control
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Bugscope Team if you do use click to drive, you click once in the direction you want to move to start driving, then click again to stop
- Bugscope Team just let us know when you have questions or if you have any trouble
- Bugscope Team this is the edge of the sample, or was anyway
- Teacher what are we looking at here?
Bugscope Team this is a fruit fly compound eye, with setae, or bug hairs, sticking out between the individual facets, or ommatidia
- Bugscope Team I clicked on the fruit fly eye preset to pull us off the edge of the world...
- Bugscope Team here if you want you can take the mag down lower to see just where you are
- Bugscope Team the hairs help the insect navigate different wind currents here
- Teacher ethan asks Why do insects have antennae?
Bugscope Team antennae are very important to insects, some insects rely solely on their antennae to get signals.
- 1:30pm
- Teacher morgan asks how can you tell if an insect has laid eggs?
Bugscope Team hmm good question. I'm not sure. Sometimes we have entomologists that log in that might be able to answer that. I guess one way would be to open them up or look in the areas where they live.
- Teacher daniel asks why do bees have stripes?
Bugscope Team they are warning. Bright colors on insects are warnings to other animals that they are dangerous. Sometimes they aren't dangerous, they just have them as a defense mechanism
- Teacher anthony asks Do insects sleep?
Bugscope Team they don't have the same sort of sleep we do. They go into a state called "torpor" that is the insect's equivalent of sleep.
- 1:36pm
- Bugscope Team An insect in torpor exhibits immobility and distinctly reduced response to stimuli
- Teacher Jaidyn asks Does an insect have to mate before it has a baby?
Bugscope Team yes a most known mating insect is the praying mantis where the female supposedly eats the male after mating. Though studies have shown that only seems to happen in captivity where the male can't easily escape
- Bugscope Team this punching bag is called a haltere that only flies have
- Bugscope Team they are evolved from a second pair of wings (flies have 2 wings and insects like bees or dragonflies have 4)
- Bugscope Team they beat against the wings creating a gyroscopic effect, helping stabilze the fly in flight
- Teacher Mackenzie asks Do insects have bones?
Bugscope Team not like we do. They have an exoskeleton- their bones are the shell they have on the outside. It's like a suit of armor for them
- Bugscope Team which is why they have so many hairs- so they can feel through their tough shell and know what's going on around them in their environment
- Teacher Breanna asks Why do bees die after they sting?
Bugscope Team it's only the honeybees that die, and only when they sting mammals. They have a barbed stinger that gets caught in our skin. When it gets caught, the bee pulls away and essentially the stinger rips out of them along with some muscle.
- 1:42pm
- Teacher Paige asks Why do some insects have wing cases?
Bugscope Team wing cases, or elytra, are actually a modified pair of wings (like in the case of the fly having halteres). They are there to protect the wings beetles have.
- Bugscope Team This is a palp, which is used to taste or move around food
- Teacher Kate asks How does a fly eat?
Bugscope Team flies eat different ways. the ones we see most have spongy mouthparts that they use to wet and then suck up the food that their saliva has dissolved.
- Bugscope Team i guess kind of like tongues in the insect world
- 1:47pm
- Teacher Ms. Adams class wants to know are there more insects that live on land or in water?
Bugscope Team we think there are more on land than in the water, but some insects live in both, or in all three: land air and water
- Bugscope Team some flies, like horseflies, have slashing mouthparts that cut your skin
- Teacher Caitlin asks How do you know if an insect is a boy or a girl?
Bugscope Team sometimes it is easy because the girls are bigger, sometimes the boys have frilly antennae and the girls do not, and sometimes, like in flies, the girl eyes are far apart whereas those of males are close together.
- Bugscope Team mosquitoes start out as eggs in the water, and then the larvae live underwater, and then of course they metamorphose into flying creatures
- Teacher VIctoria asks How many insects are there in the whole world?
Bugscope Team there are trillions, and there are hundreds of thousands of species
- Bugscope Team or sometimes the males will be more colorful
- Bugscope Team if an insect has a stinger or an ovipositor, it is a female
- Bugscope Team this is a caterpillar
- 1:52pm
- Bugscope Team can you see the stemmata -- the little eyes?
- Bugscope Team someone made a scientific estimate that there are 1,017,018 species of insects in the world. Wow! That means you could spend your whole life looking at different kinds of insects and never see them all.
- Bugscope Team the caterpillar has five or six simple eyes on either side of the head
- Teacher Skylar asks how many bees can live in a hive?
Bugscope Team A honey bee hive can contain up to 40,000 bees
- Teacher Josh asks where do insects find food?
Bugscope Team they find food everywhere -- they are on every continent, and some of them can eat things we cannot, like paper and glue
- Teacher Quentin asks DO mother insects stay with the babies?
Bugscope Team usually they do not; sometimes the babies have to be careful not to be eaten
- 1:58pm
- Bugscope Team this is the claw of a fruit fly
- Teacher Cali asks How many eyes do bees have?
Bugscope Team they have two big compound eyes and three other small simple eyess
- Bugscope Team bees babies get mothered kind of
- Bugscope Team by the workers
- Bugscope Team that is a good point; ants also take care of the babies, but it is not the mother who cares for them
- Bugscope Team oops simple eyes -- also called 'ocelli'
- Teacher Lindsey asks Do ants like water?
Bugscope Team I don't think they like it at all, generally, not to live in. They have a kind of waterproof shell around them to help keep them dry.
- Teacher Hannah asks Why are most beetles dark and shiny?
Bugscope Team one reason, maybe the main reason, they are dark is because most of them live in the dirt. So they get better camouflage when they are dark.
- Bugscope Team Wow! This is my favorite!
- Bugscope Team this is a weevil!]
- Bugscope Team you can see its snout, and you can see its eyes, and its antennae
- Bugscope Team weevils are sometimes called snout beetless
- Teacher Major asks Do any insects hibernate?
Bugscope Team the Asian beetles that look like ladybugs try to overwinter in our houses, and that is kind of like hibernating.
- 2:03pm
- Teacher What are those circles on the weevil?
Bugscope Team this isnt the weevil here. this is carbon tape, where we stick the insects on
- Teacher We like th eweevil too
- Teacher It looks like an amusement park ride :)
- Bugscope Team the weevil actually has scales like a mosquito or a moth/butterfly
- Bugscope Team here is the weevil, and you can see the two antennae in the middle
- Bugscope Team you can also see its eyes, which are streamlined into the shape of the head
- Bugscope Team it is so cute
- Teacher Many students asked how long do insects live generally?
Bugscope Team usually one season. some will overwinter, some will live 4 or 5 weeks. Mayflies may live only a few hours as adults.
- Teacher Claire asks Do insects live in one place all their lives?
Bugscope Team some may, but a good example of one that doesnt is the monarch butterfly that travels during it's life. I believe they go between canada and mexico
- Bugscope Team insects have different phases of life. for example the flies we see start out as eggs, and then maggots, before they turn into flies. once they get to be flies they don't grow, so a small fly will always be small.
- 2:08pm
- Bugscope Team this is so cool
- Teacher David asks Are ladybugs nice?
Bugscope Team regular ladybugs are usually nice. the Asian beetles that look like ladybugs are often not so nice. our skin looks like it would be very tasty, and so they bite us. it is a surprise for them as well
- Teacher We think it is cool too :)
- Bugscope Team the weevil eye is the top half of what we see, and the scales are the bottom half
- Teacher We had questions written down so we would be prepared
- Teacher We also have six 2nd grade classes in here together
- Teacher Blayne asks Why do some grasshoppers spit?
Bugscope Team Some grasshoppers spit a brown bitter liquid as a defensive behavior in response to being handled.
- Bugscope Team they aren't nice when they smell up your house, but they are helpful when they kill aphids, which are pests of crops
- Bugscope Team ooh!
- Bugscope Team look at the eyes!
- Bugscope Team this is a cool spider that has red eyes, which you cant see here
- Teacher Ashton asks what is the most important body part of an insect?
Bugscope Team it depends on what perspective we take, but it could be the antennae, for day to day communcation
- 2:14pm
- Bugscope Team oops can't spell 'communication'
- Teacher Nicholas asks Can dogs smell insects?
Bugscope Team Dogs have a keen sense of smell. They can smell insects embedded in the ground or in woodwork. In the United States dogs are used to sniff out termite infestations.
- Teacher Nina asks How do insects smell with their antennae? Or can they?
Bugscope Team they have tiny sensory hairs, called setae, that are chemosensory, meaning they can smell chemicals in the air with them. they also have pits in the antennae that can pick up smells. sometimes odor is sensed by touch as well
- Teacher Many students also asked how to insects fit into tight spots that seem smaller than them?
- 2:19pm
- Bugscope Team the exoskeleton is flexible and can compress a little, using muscles on the inside walls
- Bugscope Team if you ever try to pick up an earwig, you could be surprised at its ability to flex its tail around to try to pinch you
- Teacher At our field trip nature hike on Tuesday our guides htere told us that some insects like a crane fly only live to mate and they do not eat. Kealy asks why do some insects not eat?
Bugscope Team well they already ate when they were larvae, and the food lasts long enough that they don't need to eat in their short life as adults
- Bugscope Team sometimes it is safer to be in those little spots, and some of the features of insects make use of tiny spots. for example the arolium on a grasshopper's claw
- Bugscope Team you all have come up with great questions
- Bugscope Team i wish our resident entomologist was able to log in today. She can give some really great and fun answers
- Bugscope Team mayflies are like that. they have little time to mate and no time to eat
- Bugscope Team but female mosquitoes have to get a blood meal in order to be able to lay their eggs
- Teacher We are going to ask two more questions then head back to get ready to go home :)
- Teacher We have really enjoyed our session
- Bugscope Team Some adult moths will have no mouths so they cant feed
- Teacher Many students asked if insects have teeth?
Bugscope Team they dont have teeth, but some will have a hinged jaw, like this ladybug, they use to cut into their food. Sometimes the jaws will have little serrations that resemble teeth
- Bugscope Team We have had fun too!
- 2:25pm
- Teacher This is the big question...Reannen asks What was the first insect on Earth?
Bugscope Team oh goodness
Bugscope Team the oldest insect is said to be similar to a may fly
- Bugscope Team we don't know. we do know that dragonflies have been around for a long long time
- Teacher Thank you so very much.. We had a great time.. we need to go and start packing up top go home. We would love to do this program again next year!!!
- Bugscope Team but certainly there were once simple insects -- hexapods. and they likely didn't fly at first
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Teacher :)
- Bugscope Team that is your member page...
- Teacher Wil we be able to see our questions and responsesthere?
Bugscope Team yes, there is a link where you can look at the transcript, which also has all the images
- Teacher Awesome
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-007/
- Teacher Is there any follow up I need to do for the session?
- Bugscope Team there is a feedback form that will help us in the future
- 2:30pm
- Bugscope Team on that page there is a link, like the 3rd line down, to submit feedback
- Bugscope Team that should be found on your member page as well
- Bugscope Team Thank You again!
- Teacher Thank you so much!!! It was great, sorry we were late I thought our IT girl was going to set it up before hand so it too me a minute to log everything on and ge thte smarboard turned on.
- Teacher I will do the follow up
- Teacher I will get that done
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Bugscope Team hi whs guest
- Guest is the session ended or just starting?
Bugscope Team it just ended, but did you want to try to control the scope a little bit? I could check to make sure the sample is still in vacuum
- Bugscope Team the 'scope is still set up
- Bugscope Team you have control if you want to move around
- Guest ok
- 2:35pm
- Bugscope Team so please drive as much as you like and feel free to ask questions -- we have a little while before we have to give up the microscope
- Guest insect feet just amaze me
- Guest so cool
- 2:40pm
- Guest wing scales?
Bugscope Team that's right, they are are same stuff that comes off on your fingers when you rub their wings
- Guest thanks for the time with the scope.
- Guest I need to run.
- Guest have a great day
- Bugscope Team thanks for trying out bugscope
