Connected on 2011-02-04 09:00:00 from Brunswick, GA, US
- 7:52am
- Bugscope Team venting the chamber
- Bugscope Team now pumping the chamber down with the sample in it
- 8:10am
- Bugscope Team almost there...
- Bugscope Team the tall thing you can see on the stub is a wasp, looks like a mud dauber
- 8:16am
- Bugscope Team turning on the beam...
- 8:22am
- 8:27am
- Bugscope Team Good morning!
- Bugscope Team Sherri I am making the presets
- Bugscope Team this is Scot, on the ESEM right now
- Teacher Great! I just wanted to get logged on and make sure we were set to go.
- Bugscope Team Cool! The specimens you sent are very nice.
- Teacher Oh good! We were worried about them. We collected them them from the coastal wetlands. The kids had a great time.
- 8:33am
- Bugscope Team good morning, Sunny!
- 8:39am
- Bugscope Team Hello Cathy!
- Teacher Good morning!
- Bugscope Team this wasp is kind of scary
- Teacher I know it was when it was alive!
- Teacher Hi Cathy!
- Teacher Hey, Sherri (and everyone!) Thanks again so much for setting this up - the kids are thrilled!
- 8:46am
- Teacher hello all, this looks greawt
- Bugscope Team Hello Joni!
- Teacher Hi Joni!
- Teacher Hi, Joni!
- Teacher Your welcome Cathy but the BugScope people are the ones to thank! :)
- Teacher Yes, that's right - thanks!!
- Bugscope Team yay Thank You this is fun for us
- 8:52am
- Teacher Hi Annie!
- Bugscope Team Hello Annie!
- 8:58am
- Teacher Hi, Annie, glad you made it on!
- Teacher Hey Annie
- Teacher They are setting up the specimins
- Teacher Are we just running through pictures?
Bugscope Team Joni I just finished making all of the presets. I am done and ready to give you control of the 'scope
- Bugscope Team Sherri has control now. She can change mag, focus, click in the screen to center, and go to the lefthand screen to click on a preset
- Bugscope Team clicking on a preset will drive the microscope to that saved position on the stub
- Teacher Great!
- 9:03am
- Bugscope Team the tiny setae are sticky
- Bugscope Team the pad the setae are attached to -- sticking out of -- is called the pulvillus
- Bugscope Team some insects, like grasshoppers, have an inflatable globelike thing between their claws called an arolium
- Bugscope Team you can see that if you click on one of the grasshopper presets
- Teacher Are they flat on the tips or cupped?
- Bugscope Team they are a bit cupped, I think
- Bugscope Team sometimes they have a super tiny projection on the very tip that may help them get loose
- Teacher When you say "sticky" does that mean they secrete a substance?
Bugscope Team I think they do secrete a substance -- that is what I have head
- Teacher The kids think it looks like sea grass
- Teacher So, is Sherri the one that would have to go to the grasshopper preset?
Bugscope Team yes unless someone else would like to drive
- Bugscope Team yay Cool
- Teacher Nope...I am fine with Sherri doing it.
- Bugscope Team grasshopper head
- 9:08am
- Bugscope Team cool compound eyes, and you can see the palps
- Teacher Dixie says...Go Sherri
- Teacher Mykal loves this one!
- Bugscope Team there are usually two sets of palps, mandibular and maxillary, that help insects taste and manipulate their food
- Teacher the eye is very cool
- Teacher Scot what is the are to the left of the eye?
- Bugscope Team you can see the individual facets, called ommatidia
- Teacher Is their vision like a fly's?
- Bugscope Team yes very much like that
- Bugscope Team flies can likely see a little better, and flies often have three more eyes, called ocelli, on the top of the head
- Teacher are those nostrils of a sort?
- Bugscope Team that is where we lost the antenna, up top
- Teacher What is in the top center?
Bugscope Team it's the base of the (missing) antenna
- Bugscope Team grasshoppers may have simple eyes -- ocelli -- as well. I'm not sure
- 9:13am
- Bugscope Team this is a wasp with a fearsome long stinger
- Teacher He is a scary looking guy!
- Teacher He is fearsome.
- Teacher What is the white area in the middle?
- Bugscope Team because its stinger is so long, I imagine it is a large parasitic wasp. they sting to paralyze their prey and then lay eggs
- Teacher I didn't either...then H said..his rear end.
- Teacher We're not getting where the stinger is ...
Bugscope Team you mean it's not working when you click on it?
- Teacher Tell me if anyone else would like control
- Teacher So, that's the stinger?
- Teacher Ahhh...there it is! Yikes
- Bugscope Team yes I am sorry I am stuck on the phone for a sec
- Student Good lord what a stinger!
- Bugscope Team I think because it is so long, it is likely used to sting large caterpillars, to get past their 'fur' and then lay eggs inside of their bodies
- Teacher Nathaniel would like to know why it's curved?
Bugscope Team that is a great question! I am not sure
- 9:19am
- Bugscope Team being curved does make it stronger, however, compared to it being straight
- Bugscope Team stingers are modified ovipositors
- Teacher How long does it take the eggs to hatch (Brie asks)?
Bugscope Team it really depends on the species -- likely a few weeks average
- Teacher What is this?
Bugscope Team Joni this I have never seen before. There are three of these nasty hook-like stinger-like things coming from the top of this other wasp's abdomen
- Teacher Leave it to Ga bugs!
- Teacher It looks like a clam or some other bivalve!
Bugscope Team yes it does! the stingers in this case are pretty solid looking too
- Student Possibly to maintain attachment during egg-laying?
Bugscope Team yes they do look like they help the wasp secure itself to whatever it wants to hold onto
- Teacher So, this was from a different wasp than we were looking at before?
Bugscope Team yes this is that wasp whose head is half gone -- broken away -- with the complex and 'skeletal' mouthparts
- 9:24am
- Bugscope Team the wasps we have looked at this morning are a little too large for us to see the whole body in one view on the 'scope
- Bugscope Team these are eye facets -- ommatidia -- of the female mosquito you sent
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down you can see where you are
- Teacher Did we send some tiny insects too?
Bugscope Team yes some very small flies, a super cute little stinkbug, a very small centipede that I forgot to make a preset of, and two ants, one of which looks pretty good
- Bugscope Team to the left, with the scales, is the pedicel
- Bugscope Team the pedicel is the donut-like base of the antenna
- Bugscope Team mosquitoes, moths, butterflies and skippers, silverfish, and very few beetles and weevils have scales
- Bugscope Team if you had tiny scales like that and you flew into a spider's web, you have a chance of leaving the scales behind and slipping away
- Bugscope Team scales in some moths and butterflies also provide color, both from pigment and structural
- Teacher This is so cool!
- 9:29am
- Bugscope Team structural colors come from the shape and periodicity of the ridges in the scales
- Teacher Are these all concave on the ends? If so, why would that be?
Bugscope Team the ommatidia? they would all be swollen and round when the insect is alive. when the insect dies, especially in mosquitoes, the ommatidia shrivel, like basketballs with no air in them
- Teacher Ah ha!
- Bugscope Team for me, even, who spend a lot of time looking at these critters, it's easy to forget how dynamic they are, always moving when they are alive
- Bugscope Team this is the emerald beetle you sent, and I didn't notice before, but the eye is visible behind it
- Teacher We're amazed at how hairy they appear!
Bugscope Team the hairs insects are called setae, bristles, spines, trichae, microsetae, microtrichae, and then entomologists often give up and call them hairs
- Teacher Help me find it, please?
Bugscope Team right in the middle now
- 9:35am
- Teacher Unreal!
- Student great shot of the eye!
- Teacher Amazing!
- Teacher It looks like eyelashes over the eye.
- Bugscope Team anyway, the setae can be mechano (touch) sensory, chemo (smell, scent, pheromone) sensory, and/or thermo (hot/cold) sensory
- Teacher And what are the string-like, hair-things spreading over the eye?
Bugscope Team I think they are more setae that are likely mechanosensory
- Teacher LOL that was funny Scot!
- Bugscope Team insects and other similar arthropods do not have skin -- they have an exoskeleton, which is like if you were to wear armor
- Teacher So, Scot, but "hairs" actually have many functions, helping the critter to understand it's surroundings?
Bugscope Team absolutely -- the hairs stick through the armor, or shell, or cuticle, or chitin, and help the insect sense its environment. at the other end they are attached to nerves that go to the brain
- Teacher Sherri can we see the Emerald Beetle mouthparts?
- Bugscope Team ants get almost all of the data they use to function via chemoreceptors, many of which are on the antennae
- 9:40am
- Teacher Wow ... very cool.
- Teacher Scot, can you get the Emerald Beetle mouthparts to come up? It's not working for me.
- Teacher Hi Julie
- Bugscope Team I just clicked on them. Sometimes a preset will not work...
- Bugscope Team the things that look like little arms are palps -- the accessory mouthparts
- Bugscope Team and we are centered on the antenna
- Bugscope Team and the mouthparts, which are just confusing, to me
- Teacher Is his "mouth" below what looks like a human nose?
Bugscope Team Cathy I think it is right in the center there. Insect mouths are quite different from ours and often open side to side as well as up and down
- Bugscope Team it is rare that we are able to look inside of one
- 9:46am
- Teacher See Joni! It was worth it to get these great insects!
- Teacher thanks Sherri
- Teacher yes, it was
- Bugscope Team be sure and let me know if you have any trouble driving, and if someone else would like to drive
- Bugscope Team these are placoid sensilla and tiny setae, on the honeybee's antenna, just part of one segment
- Teacher I'd be happy for anyone else to take the controls!
Bugscope Team you are good and no one else wants to try
- Teacher amazing
- Teacher Sherri you are doing fine...it would take too long for others to learn this.
- Bugscope Team but you could let them know that it is not that hard
- Bugscope Team ha
- Student that's just gorgeous
- Teacher (No, Sherri - I'm fine watching! You're doing great!)
- Teacher It looks like a strawberry.
- Bugscope Team I think the placoid sensilla are chemoreceptors, but really I am not sire
- Teacher It does Joni!
- Student scot can you please explain these structures on the antenna?
- Bugscope Team Bluffbug I am not at all sure. Often, as on a roach, sensillae like that register motion or movement.
- Teacher Aww, he is a cutie!
- Student gotcha, thanks
- Teacher chemoreceptors - pick up on chemicals?
Bugscope Team yes insects constantly monitor the air for pheromones, for example
- Bugscope Team and speaking of smells...
- 9:51am
- Teacher cute's not the word I'd use..
- Bugscope Team stinkbugs are said to be offended by their own stink, which sort of makes sense
- Teacher Brie would like to know what the "dents" are called.
Bugscope Team stinkbugs are said to have a means of ameliorating the scent they produce, and I think that some of those dents have little fan-like elements in them (I have seen them before) that function to damp down the stink
- Bugscope Team also, however, dents can make a tiny insect look shiny -- iridescent -- to us
- Teacher What are the structures on either side of his face that look like the undersea vent tubes
Bugscope Team sitnkbugs are in the order Hemiptera, so they have piercing/sucking mouthparts. that whole assembly is the piercing mouthpart, and it has a kind of hydraulic pump that we see in the center to help suck up liquids from plants, and sometimes from other insects
- 9:56am
- Teacher Just for my info - will this session be archived so we can review it at a later date?
Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-057
- Student Scot is the tube in the ceter for puncturing plants and withdrawing sap?
Bugscope Team yes we do not see the tip, which is further to the SE
- Bugscope Team Annie I just clipped and pasted the member page info. You can also take out the s from where it says https
- Bugscope Team if you went to the Bugscope home page, and search, or Look Around, I think it says, you would see a list of session numbers. You can click on yours (2010-057) to read the chat transcript and also see the images from this session.
- Teacher Im I getting the end of it?
Bugscope Team it is obscured by those pesky legs
- Bugscope Team this is where the 'stink' comes from, from between the 2nd and 3rd pair of legs
- 10:01am
- Bugscope Team this is so cool!
- Teacher WOW!
- Teacher Amazing!
- Teacher Very pretty pattern.
- Bugscope Team Annie if you are using a Windows machine you can right-click on an open space on the screen, select Properties, and then Settings. That will let you play with the screen resolution, at least on many Windows machines.
- Teacher Are they connected?
Bugscope Team yes I think they are connected
- Teacher What is the structure in the upper right corner?
- Bugscope Team so beautiful. good thing we aren't able to broadcast the smell
- Teacher (Sorry, I'm getting a lot of excited questions here)
- Bugscope Team when stinkbugs are frightened, or bothered, they emit a pretty mad smell
- Teacher I'd hate to imagine the SMELL being magnified 2500x!
Bugscope Team haha yeah
- Teacher So does the "smell" flow between those? What causes the smell, a gas or a liquid?
Bugscope Team I think it is a liquid that aerosolizes easily.
- 10:06am
- Student Are we looking at storage and or venting mechanisms?
Bugscope Team this I understand is the venting mechanism, with storage just beneath
- Teacher This is so amazing!
- Teacher And can it run out of smell in a dose, like a skunk?
Bugscope Team I think yes, they have to conserve their opportunities to stink until it can be regenerated.
- Teacher I love the name, Scot.
- Teacher And one more: where do they get the necessary chemicals for the smell: creat it, plants, etc.?
Bugscope Team think about Monarch butterflies, which eat milkweed, which is poisonous to many other critters; spiders will just cut them out of their webs. so I think this is similar; it likely comes from the plants they feed upon.
- Teacher (Yeah - we've named him "grass-hommie".)
Bugscope Team the central part is the arolium, which can inflate and deflate and serves to help hold onto a surface with tiny cracks in it. or that is how I understand it to work
- 10:12am
- Teacher Thanks, Scot - I had the Monarch in mind when I asked.
Bugscope Team many insects produce chemicals that are intended, especially, to deter ants. sometimes the chemistry is relatively simple and would come from metabolizing a number of ordinary plants. but plants do produce toxins, of course.
- Teacher It looks as if there is a wood shaving stuck to one of the hairs on his foot.
Bugscope Team those are scales from a butterfly or moth, likely
- Teacher But, I thought they only ate my plants. Is he getting them off of the plants?
- Teacher What are gang signs?
Bugscope Team I was making fun of the way the grasshopper is holding his hands, like a rapper or hiphop enthusiast
- Teacher Oh, okay! :)
- Bugscope Team here you can see tiny mold spores; this is on the abdomen of the spider
- Bugscope Team spiders are softbodied, for the most part, and when they die they often shrivel up. so they do not always look good in SEM
- Teacher This is truly awesome!
- Teacher Wow! So the spider picked up mold spores, and now we can see them?!
Bugscope Team yes those little bouquets are the fruiting bodies
- Teacher Annie...I agree...I am nearly speechless and that is saying something.
- Teacher They remind me of undersea coral.
- 10:18am
- Teacher Yes Annie, or sea sponges.
- Teacher Amazing how much this looks like sea life.
Bugscope Team they look similar to what we see on caddisfly larvae, sometimes. they live that part of their lives underwater and pick up diatoms as well as little vessels that look much like those
- Teacher This is the most amazing experience!
Bugscope Team Yay!
- Bugscope Team the long branch-like portions of the mold, or fungus, are the fungal hyphae
- Bugscope Team the electron beam affects the things we are looking at, sometimes, makes them bend, for example
- Teacher Unprofessional question, Scot: you guys have a lot of fun with that 'scope, don't you? : )
Bugscope Team oh yeah. we are so lucky to have a chance to see all of these things every day. cutting-edge research. we train grad students and postdocs, mostly, to do their own research using a variety of microscopes besides this one
- Teacher Wow - that's just fantastic, Scot.
- Teacher If I remember correctly they were about the size of a sand gnat.
- Bugscope Team at first I thought they might be tiny parasitic wasps, of which there are hundreds of species. but wasps (and bees) have four wings, and flies (Diptera) have two wings, plus two halteres that help balance the motion of the wings.
- 10:23am
- Bugscope Team so we could see the halteres if we weren't sure how many wings we were looking at.
- Bugscope Team this is really nice
- Teacher That just makes my skin crawl.
Bugscope Team ha I guess we are used to it here.
- Teacher That's right out of a sci-fi movie!
- Teacher Ms.Sherri read my mind.
- Teacher What's your skin doing now Joni??
- Bugscope Team the little things that look like calla lilies are those same tenent setae
- Teacher This is a beautiful image.
- Teacher It looks almost glassy under the tenent setae.
- Teacher Now, this is a claw - those parts don't look moveable, are they?
Bugscope Team yes I was just thinking that. many claws open and close, and there is a tendon inside the tarsus (the 'forearm') called an unguitractor that lets them do that.
- Student Excellent clarity, Scot, thanks
Bugscope Team super nice specimens
- Bugscope Team this is a field-emission scanning electron microscope, and it lets us get much better resolution than an ordinary SEM.
- Teacher I was worried we didn't have enough or they wouldn't be nice enough!
Bugscope Team I didn't have room for the click beetle or the roach.
- 10:28am
- Bugscope Team the click beetle was industrially large, and in our experience roaches are pretty streamlined and not as interesting
- Teacher Looks like feathers
Bugscope Team I think that the scales have a function, or a few functions, much like those of feathers
- Bugscope Team the fascicle, with four cutting mouthparts, a siphon tube (blood one way and saliva the other), and another component I don't recognize, is inside of this tube, which has a slit all down one side.
- Teacher This is the "mean" part, right? (I hate mosquitoes.)
Bugscope Team yes it is. only the females bite, if that makes you feel any better.
- Bugscope Team the males have a proboscis just like this too
- Teacher Haha - maybe a little, but it's not like they wear heels and carry purses so I can tell!
Bugscope Team the females have kind of ugly, spare antennae. those of the males are ornate. if you ever get close enough to look. but of course it'll be all females coming after you for blood
- 10:33am
- Student No, but this parallels humans in some symbolic way
Bugscope Team ha yeah. the males are almost redundant
- Bugscope Team when I saw this just by eye I thought it was a water strider
- Teacher poor boys ...
- Bugscope Team the reason the females are so ravenous is because they've bred and their eggs are fertilized, but they need the protein from a blood meal to be able to successfully lay their eggs
- Teacher What is it sitting on?
Bugscope Team the background is carbon doublestick tape with a little silver paint on it
- Teacher Was this a small green insect?
Bugscope Team I am sorry I don't remember, but it does look like a katydid, which are often green
- Bugscope Team there are a few species of mosquitoes, not sure if they're in the U.S., that do not bite.
- Teacher I seem to remember he was very small
Bugscope Team yeah small and slender but I don't remember the color
- Teacher Sherri, can we see the ant head?
- Teacher Could you bring up the ant comb?
- 10:39am
- Bugscope Team oops this is the head
- Teacher Look at that thin neck!
- Bugscope Team the large part of the head behind the eye is mostly full of muscle that operates the mandibles
- Teacher Non-biting mosquitoes, really? I wonder where they get _their_ protein ...
Bugscope Team I think they eat nectar from flowers like some moths and butterflies
- Teacher Look at how small the neck attachment is to the thorax
- Bugscope Team my favorite ants, now, are leafcutters. they are actually farmers.
- Teacher Vegan mosquitoes, I love it! Is this a red ant...?
Bugscope Team I think it was reddish brown
- Bugscope Team ants are related to wasps and bees
- Teacher Yes, leafcutters are very cool.
Bugscope Team the workers have super long legs that let them cut bigger pieces of leaves, and they have these awesome serrated jaws that look like pinking shears
- 10:44am
- Teacher What aspects make them related?
Bugscope Team ants and wasps actually look much alike. male ants fly but you rarely see them. bees and wasps, each having four wings, have hamuli -- little hooks -- that connect the fore- and hindwings in flight so there are essentially two wings
- Student Scot, does the relative smallness or even lack of eyes mean they rely more on chemical communication etc than some other insects?
Bugscope Team I think the relative smallness has more to do with the duty -- the job description -- of the particular ant. they live underground often, so it is helpful to have a small body. and of course they don't have light underground, so chemical communication is perfect and also highly developed.
- Teacher Are these hairs that we are seeing making the patterns on the surface?
Bugscope Team some of those -- you can tell -- are fine hairs that may give the head a shininess. the longer strands are I think spider web. they may also be fungal hyphae.
- 10:49am
- Teacher very cool
- Teacher can we move on to the ant comb?
Bugscope Team yes just a sec
- Bugscope Team worked that time : )
- Bugscope Team you cannot see the comb very well -- it is flattened here. it is used to clean the antennae
- Teacher So, are these are on the antennae?
Bugscope Team we usually find these on the forelegs; I know it is hard to tell where you are from this perspective
- Bugscope Team sometimes the comb is in a rounded joint, like a rounded inner elbow
- Teacher Do the hairs stand up when it combs the antennae?
Bugscope Team yes, and usually we see them up rather than folded over
- Teacher They look soft
Bugscope Team ha yeah
- 10:54am
- Teacher Is that a scale from another insect that we see up in the corner?
- Teacher What have we not seen guys?
- Bugscope Team that is the comb, folded over
- Bugscope Team maybe you have read this: if you take the scent of a dead ant and put it on a live ant, the ants whose task it is to clear the nest of dead ants will carry that live ant away regardless of its squirming
- Teacher They do - so the comb is just that, with slits? It's hard to tell with it flat.
Bugscope Team I am sorry this is not really the best example.
- Teacher hmmmm that could be handy around here.
Bugscope Team oh goodness
- Teacher Ooops sorry!
- Teacher Now I see "slits" on the comb - can they control it well?
- Teacher (I have a child on my lap)
- Teacher Well, you DO get enthusiastic sometimes ... ; )
- Student That's like a line from Holy Grail...."I'm not dead yet!"
Bugscope Team ha that's right
- Teacher Okay, did we get to all of the presets?
- 11:00am
- Bugscope Team spiders have the ability to autotomize their legs. so if they sense venom entering one of their legs they can just jettison it. eventually they could I suppose have no legs like the guy in Holy Grail.
- Student lol
- Teacher How well can the ant control the comb?
Bugscope Team pretty well, really, like a fly washing its face but the ant strokes its antennae with the comb
- Teacher (I have to go re-watch "The Holy Grail".)
- Teacher Cool! That's always fun to watch ...
- Teacher What an awesome talent!
- Student I won't go into "How can you tell she's a Queen Ant?"
- Teacher Yeah, this is creepy. But really interesting!
- Bugscope Team spiders, some of them, like tarantulas, have what are called 'urticating hairs' that they can release if you get too close. the hairs irritate your eyes and the linings of your nostrils, like for example if you are a dog sniffing a big ol' tarantula
- Teacher That's "is this"...I have now made the kid get off my lap
- Teacher I sthis the inside of his mouth?
Bugscope Team yes but it is eaten away. sometimes we find bitemarks from dustmites in places like this
- 11:05am
- Teacher so, a dust mite ate off part of his face?
- Teacher I want a new pillow--today!!
- Teacher So this damage was likely caused by mites?
Bugscope Team I'm not sure, here. Usually you see what are obvious bitemarks. this may have broken end then the softer parts were eaten or rotted away. the thing is that we can see rot in the form of mold or bacteria, for example.
- Teacher Legless spiders, bald tarantulas ... faceless Sherri ...
Bugscope Team ha
- Teacher {{I love my friends}}
- Teacher ; D
- Bugscope Team It's time for me to shut down. I really enjoyed this session.
- Teacher So did we - thank you so much!
- Teacher We did too...thanks
- Teacher Thank you so much! This has been an amazing experience!
- Student Thanks so very much!
- Teacher yes...I feel like teaching from a book is now very bland.
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-057
- Teacher Bye, All!
- Bugscope Team that or without the s in the https, or just searching for 2010-057 from the front page.
- Bugscope Team Bye!!!
- 11:10am
- Teacher Scot do I have an evaluation to fill out?
