Connected on 2010-07-22 09:30:00 from Grafton, WI, US
- 8:47am
- Bugscope Team pumping down, getting ready to set up!
- 8:55am
- 9:02am
- 9:07am
- Bugscope Team now we are making presets for today's session at 9:30 our time
- 9:13am
- Bugscope Team Good Morning!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team I am still setting up the presets but close to being able to turn the controls over to you.
- Teacher Good morning Scott. We will be ready at 9:30.
- Bugscope Team Sounds Great!
- 9:19am
- 9:27am
- Teacher Good morning. We have class until 10:00 and then we will take a ten minute break until the next class arrives at 10:10.
- Bugscope Team great!
- Bugscope Team you have control of the microscope now
- Teacher What are we looking at? We think it's a grasshopper.
- Bugscope Team this is a spider, and we are looking at its fang, but it is hard to see very well
- Bugscope Team the thing that curves up from left to right at the bottom of the image is the fang
- 9:32am
- Bugscope Team spiders feed by injecting venom into their prey. the venom dissolves the internal organs of the prey, and the spider then sucks that all up like a milkshake
- Teacher Sophey wants to know what kind of spider is this?
- Bugscope Team now we can see the chelicerae a little better
- Bugscope Team I am sorry I don't know what kind it is
- Bugscope Team it may be a wolf spider
- Bugscope Team now you can see the eyes, on the top of the head
- Bugscope Team there are usually eight eyes
- Bugscope Team often spiders do not see very well, despite having eight eyes
- Bugscope Team they rely more on their abilities to sense vibration
- Bugscope Team sound is a vibration, for example
- Bugscope Team they use their tiny fine hairs to sense vibration
- Teacher We want to know if his mouth is right below his eyes
Bugscope Team Just below his eyes are the chelicerae, which are vertical muscular jaws, kind of like two buck teeth
- Bugscope Team at the ends of the chelicerae are the fangs, which point inwards and are horizontal
- Bugscope Team the fangs are what the spider feeds through
- Bugscope Team in the background we see little craters in the cabon tape that the spider is stuck to
- 9:37am
- Bugscope Team you can choose from among the presets to the right of the chat box to have the microscope drive to another location on the stub
- Bugscope Team the fangs are hard to see because they have lots of setae -- lots of tiny hairs, covering them
- Bugscope Team this is the sheath that holds the piercing mouthparts that the female mosquito uses to bite you
- Bugscope Team mosquitoes, like butterflies and moths and silverfish, have little scales, almost like feathers are to a bird
- Bugscope Team you can see a couple of the scales to the bottom of where we are looking now
- Bugscope Team the part that sticks into your skin is inside this sheath, and it is very sharp, with little cutting edges like a steak knife
- Bugscope Team and the antennae, and the base of the proboscis
- 9:43am
- Bugscope Team the eyes go all around the head -- there are two main eyes, but they are compound eyes and have many facets
- Bugscope Team the thing that looks like a donut is the pedicel -- the base of one of the antennae
- Teacher How long does the male mosquito live?
Bugscope Team from days to weeks, probably; it depends on the kind of mosquito
- Bugscope Team you can tell males from females because the males have very ornate antennae -- very fancy. those of females are kind of boring-looking
- Bugscope Team there are some flies that live only for a few hours in their adult form
- Teacher Greg thinks this is a male mosquito. Is it?
- Bugscope Team it looks very much like a male, but its antennae at not as fancy as those of a male
- Bugscope Team they are very similar
- Bugscope Team male mosquitoes have frilly antennae, and I am sorry we don't have any to look at today
- Bugscope Team this is one of the many legs of a rolypoly -- a pillbug
- 9:48am
- Bugscope Team they are crustaceans, actually related to crabs and lobsters. they are not insects
- Bugscope Team insects have only six legs, a head, a thorax (the 'chest'), and an abdomen
- Teacher Mandy wants to know what does a rolypoly eat
- Bugscope Team they eat things that are rotting, like dead plants and mold
- Bugscope Team they are called 'isopods' because all of their legs ('pod') are the same ('iso').
- Bugscope Team like an isosceles triangle, in which all of the sides are the same length
- Bugscope Team this is the face, so cute
- Bugscope Team you can see its antennae are folded, there at the top
- Teacher Carly wants to know where his eyes are
Bugscope Team sometimes you can see them here, but they are on the other side of the head where we cannot catch a glimpse of them
- Bugscope Team insects and other arthropods have mouths that open sideways, compared to ours
- 9:53am
- Bugscope Team \
- Bugscope Team I'm sorry we cannot see the eyes. they look like flat raspberries, with maybe 20 facets
- Bugscope Team these are a few scales from the wing of a multicolored butterfly, I think a painted lady butterfly
- Bugscope Team the scales are what make the wings feel so silky when you touch them, and they come off like fine powder
- Bugscope Team they make up the color and pattern of the butterfly or moth, and they may function like feathers, in a way
- Bugscope Team but entomologists think the main function of scales may be to help the butterfly escape from spider webs
- Bugscope Team or I should say many entomologists seem to think that
- Bugscope Team if you have scales on your wings and crashed into a spider web, perhaps the scales could stay stuck to the web but you could slip out
- Teacher So do they leave some scales behind when they try to escape
Bugscope Team yes they do!
- 9:58am
- Teacher Thank you. We will break for ten minutes.
- Bugscope Team sometimes butterflies get stuck, though. spiders know that Monarch butterflies taste bad, and they will cut them out of the web.
- Bugscope Team Thank You and see you soon.
- Bugscope Team you can see that the wing scales charge up easily with electrons
- Bugscope Team that is what the glow is...
- 10:04am
- Bugscope Team feel free to choose another preset
- 10:09am
- Teacher Sara asks: How do butterflies communicate
- Bugscope Team sorry had to help someone
- Bugscope Team one way butterflies communicate is -- like many insects -- through chemical scents
- 10:14am
- Bugscope Team they use pheromones, kind of like perfume
- Bugscope Team and they have very well developed chemoreceptors, so they can smell quite well -- much better than we can
- Bugscope Team they can also see better than we can
- Teacher Dominic asks: how fast can butterflies fly
Bugscope Team well they are all a little different, but Monarch butterflies can fly hundreds and even thousands of miles. but it can take them a long time
- Bugscope Team their eyes can see light in the ultraviolet wavelengths, and they can tell what flowers they would prefer that way, for example
- Bugscope Team here is a better answer for Dominic -- the fastest butterflies are said to go 12 miles per hour, whereas moths can fly about twice that fast
- Bugscope Team this is the mouth of the rolypoly
- 10:19am
- Bugscope Team now we see tjhe antennae a ltitle better
- Bugscope Team sometimes we can see the compound eyes, but not today
- Bugscope Team when we mouth insects other arthropods like spiders and rolypolies on a stub, like today, we put them on their backs so the legs and mouthparts will be up
- Bugscope Team they actually have gills, not lungs, and they are crustaceans - they are not insects
- Bugscope Team this is one of the legs
- Bugscope Team the legs are all the same shape, and their may be fourteen of them
- Bugscope Team oops 'there' may be 14
- Bugscope Team this is kind of a mean looking and large ant
- Teacher Do all ants bite?
Bugscope Team I think that they can all bite, but there can be a huge difference in size in the same colony, and a large difference in the size of the jaws
- Bugscope Team you can see its compound eyes, and its antennae, and its mouth. the jaws open like a gate, from side to side
- 10:25am
- Bugscope Team almost all of the ants we see are females
- Bugscope Team the males have wings, and pretty much all they do is mate and die
- Bugscope Team of course there are so many different types/species of ants that there are exceptions
- Bugscope Team like the butterflies, ants depend very much on their antennae, and on chemical communication
- Bugscope Team this is a fly, and you can see its compound eyes
- Bugscope Team the compound eyes are composed of many tiny facets called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team each makes a tiny image, and the fly's brain makes sense of all of the images
- Bugscope Team you can see that there are thousands of ommatidia in one compound eye, at least in this type of fly
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes it would be hard to get glasses, but you would be able to see changes in the environment around you very quickly, and you would have a very wide view of the world around you as well.
- 10:31am
- Teacher Thank you so much for sharing all you know with the classes.
Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-060/
- 12:03pm
- Teacher Kyler asks: How big can they grow
Bugscope Team some can be more than a centimeter long; in the Tropics, and for the species that live in the water, they can be much larger.
