Connected on 2010-10-25 09:00:00 from Cockburn Town, Turks Islands, TC
- 7:35am
- Bugscope Team venting the 'scope
- Bugscope Team and pumping down
- 7:54am
- 7:59am
- Bugscope Team be right back...
- 8:11am
- Bugscope Team Good morning, Fran!
- Bugscope Team this is Scott, on three computers right now
- Bugscope Team Good morning, sp!
- Teacher Hi morning
- Teacher good morning chaos
- Bugscope Team good morning!
- Bugscope Team I am making the presets for today's session, running around the sample
- 8:16am
- Teacher What time is scheduled for my school again?
Bugscope Team it's in 45 minutes, 9 a.m. our time
- Teacher ok
- Teacher which will be 10am our time
- Teacher we will viewing the ant, house fly and ?
- Bugscope Team should be ready before that if you want to drive, but I have maybe 20 more minutes of presets to do
- Teacher thats ok
- Bugscope Team I saw a house fly earlier but am not sure if Cate was able to find a good ant.
- Teacher 10am is fine
- Teacher give the students time to prepare themselvves
- Teacher will it be possible to help me drive as well
- Bugscope Team centipede, ladybug, honeybee, housefly, spider, wasp, rolypoly, beetle, cockroach, and some things I didn't recognize
- Teacher ok...lol
- Teacher and its only one hour?
Bugscope Team we have time to run over if you want to
- 8:22am
- Teacher ok
- Teacher that would be good...thanks
- Teacher will other schools be joining us too
Bugscope Team this time is reserved for you. Sometimes we do get guests that come on
- Teacher kk
- Teacher I will be on until its time
- 8:27am
- Teacher which part is that?
- Teacher scary?
- Bugscope Team oh that is one of the honeybee antennae
- Bugscope Team its tip was broken off and had a boatload of fungus growing in it
- Teacher wow!!
- Teacher during the session
- Teacher I will be asking the names of some of these parts
- Bugscope Team hey no problem
- 8:33am
- 8:40am
- Teacher do you have any butterfly?
- Bugscope Team no sorry not today; usually we'd just have the body and a piece of a wing, since they're so large
- Bugscope Team the stub is 1 3/4" in diameter, so we squeeze stuff on
- Teacher will it be ok to see the body of the butterfly and the wing
- Teacher ok then
- 8:46am
- Teacher we will look at the housefly first
- 8:51am
- Teacher we are ready.....and the students say good morning
- Bugscope Team good morning!
- Teacher which part is this?
- Bugscope Team this now is the ant stinger
- 8:56am
- Bugscope Team the ant's abdomen is called a 'gaster,' and this is at the tip
- Bugscope Team not all ants have stingers
- Bugscope Team this ant is so tiny that it was hard to see when Cate put it on the stub
- Bugscope Team clearly it had a full but rather rough life
- Bugscope Team the thing that looks like a raspberry is the compound eye, and to the right edge of where we're looking now is the base of the antenna, where it broke off
- Bugscope Team these are the mandibles -- the biting mouthparts
- Bugscope Team and good morning everyone!
- Bugscope Team with insects that have mandibles, we see that they open from the sides, unlike our mouths, which open up and down
- Bugscope Team the jaws are curved, which makes them stronger, and they are fluted, ridged edges
- 9:02am
- Bugscope Team almost all ants we see are females
- Bugscope Team sometimes ants will bite first, and then spray formic acid into the wound
- Bugscope Team male ants have wings, or a lot of them do -- there are so many ant species
- Bugscope Team we see lots and lots of hairs, which are called 'setae,' on insects and arthropods
- Teacher what the formic acid will do to you?
Bugscope Team it will cause a burning feeling and could swell up the area
- Bugscope Team horned toads, such as you might find in Arizona and New Mexico, are said to have a formic acid requirement in their diet. they like to eat ants
- Bugscope Team anyway, about the setae -- they are often sensory structures: the insect gets information about its environment from the setae.
- 9:08am
- Bugscope Team some setae are touch- or wind-sensory, some are chemosensory and used to 'smell' the air or chemicals that they might touch; and some setae are thermosensory. they can sense hot and cold
- Teacher what they use their eyes for...if they use the setae to know their environment
Bugscope Team eyes are helpful as well, of course, and they are very important for many insects
- Bugscope Team some ants do not have any eyes at all, pointing to the importance of their antennae in getting vital information
- Teacher what they use the antennae is used for?
Bugscope Team a lot of ants signal to the rest with pheromones, and these signals are received with their antennae
- Bugscope Team many flying insects have five eyes: two compound eyes and three simple eyes, called ocelli
- Bugscope Team I just clicked to move us to the housefly head, but of course you have control of the microscope and can drive wherever you'd like
- Teacher thanks
- Bugscope Team many of the flying insects see very well, and with compound eyes that may cover much of the head -- like a dragonfly's eyes -- they have very good peripheral vision
- Teacher head
- 9:13am
- Teacher how many eyes does this fly has?
Bugscope Team this fly has 2 compound eyes and a set of three ocelli on the top of the head, which we can't see
- Teacher where are they on the body?
Bugscope Team the fly has compound eyes on either side of the head, and we can see them now
- Bugscope Team this is the underside of the head
- Bugscope Team so we see the mouthparts now, and above them, the antennae
- Bugscope Team the antennae have a pad-like base and also a small branched portion. the branched portion is called the arista -- those antennae are called 'aristate antennae.'
- Bugscope Team houseflies have sponging mouthparts, and they eat by landing on things, putting the spongelike mouthparts on them, and using the saliva to dissolve things like sugar that they can then suck up
- Bugscope Team deerflies and horseflies are not like that -- they have slashing, cutting mouthparts they slice into your skin, making the blood come to the surface so they can drink it
- 9:19am
- Bugscope Team the background, behind the fly's head, for example, is carbon doublestick tape
- Bugscope Team when Cate makes a sample like today's, she takes a circular aluminum stub and puts carbon tape on it that is sticky on both sides; they she puts a tiny pool of silver paint down, and then she puts the insects on that.
- Teacher is this the cockroach head?
Bugscope Team this is the fly head
- Bugscope Team when all of the insects/bugs are on the stub, she coats them with gold-palladium using a sputter coater
- Teacher we would like to switch to the cockraoch head
- 9:24am
- Teacher thanks
- Bugscope Team we had to drive by hand!
- Bugscope Team you can see one of the roach's palps is sticking up toward us
- Bugscope Team the palps are used -- usually there are four of them -- to help the insect taste and manipulate its food
- Bugscope Team palps are kind of like accessory arms, for the mouth
- Bugscope Team and like the antennae, in a way, they may have lots of chemosensory setae -- like tastebuds on your tongue
- Bugscope Team you can see the roach's compound eyes, streamlined into the head on either side, and you can see its antennae, one of which is broken off
- 9:30am
- Bugscope Team see the facets of the compound eye? they're called ommatidia, and each functions like a tiny lens, getting its own image
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes like this, it would be hard to buy sunglasses, but you would have very good peripheral vision
- Bugscope Team you would also have the ability to see motion much more quickly than we do, with our simple eyes
- Bugscope Team the thing that looks like a leaf is a scale from another insect
- Bugscope Team butterflies, moths, silverfish, mosquitoes, and some beetles/weevils have scales
- Bugscope Team it looks pretty sitting up
- Bugscope Team I just moved us to the silverfish head. we can see only a few facets of its compound eye, about in the middle of where we're looking now
- 9:36am
- Bugscope Team this is the silverfish head at a lower magnification; they always look kind of confused to me
- Teacher can we the see the probosis of one of the insects
Bugscope Team we can go to the honeybee and see its mouthparts
- Teacher it looks like a crab
- Teacher which part is that?
- Bugscope Team that is the bee's abdomen
- Bugscope Team now we see the bee's proboscis
- Bugscope Team it has those scissor-like covers over the tongue, which is called a 'glossa.'
- Bugscope Team it is difficult to see the glossa here
- Bugscope Team honeybees have 2 stomachs-- one for their normal food and one that is used to store the nectar for the honey
- Bugscope Team they also have two sets of wings, as do wasps
- 9:41am
- Bugscope Team these hooks are called 'hamuli.'
- Teacher what do they do with the hooks?
Bugscope Team they use them to hook the fore- and hindwings together to make it like one pair of wings when they fly
- Bugscope Team see the wings, now?
- Teacher which part is that?
Bugscope Team this is the claw and it looks very fuzzy because it is covered in mold
- 9:46am
- Bugscope Team these are the mold spores
- Teacher they say it looks like grapes
- Teacher lol
- Bugscope Team and a long setae (bug hair) going across the screne
- Bugscope Team haha yeah
- Bugscope Team this is kind of cool -- this is one of the roach's six claws
- Bugscope Team you can see that there is a butterfly scale stuck to it
- Bugscope Team when the roach wants to open or close its claw, which it uses to grasp things, like a hand, there's a tendon called an unguitractor that flexes to make that happen
- 9:51am
- Bugscope Team this is the top, exposed portion of that tendon
- Bugscope Team the pad in between the claws is called an arolium, and it is inflatable
- Bugscope Team it is also sticky, and that is what the scale is stuck to
- Bugscope Team the scale has tiny droplets of liquid on it
- Bugscope Team this is the tip of one of the fangs of the centipede
- Bugscope Team these fangs have tiny pores in them, and it appears that the venom comes out of the tiny pores rather than a specific pore like spiders have
- Teacher I am scared of centipedes
Bugscope Team yeah me too!
- 9:56am
- Bugscope Team we just moved to a spider fang, and you can see where the pore is
- Bugscope Team it looks kind of like the eye of a needle
- Bugscope Team centipedes are very creepy looking and can bite and be poisonous!
- Bugscope Team spiders, and many predatory insects like assassin bugs, inject venom into their prey that dissolves their internal organs. they are apparently unaffected by the venom, because after it has done its job they suck the insides of their prey up like a milkshake
- Bugscope Team but spiders clearly are affected by venom, and if another spider has bitten them, they can sense the venom entering one of their legs, for example. Spiders have the ability to let that leg just fall off before the venom enters the body, which is called the cephalothorax (like a head-chest)
- Bugscope Team when a spiders jettisons one of its legs, that is called 'autotomy.' it's a good thing they have eight legs.
- 10:02am
- Bugscope Team here we are looking at the housefly's compound eye, up close
- Bugscope Team we can see maybe 12 or 15 of the ommatidia -- the facets of the eye
- Bugscope Team we can see tiny salt crystals that are stuck to the eye
- Bugscope Team the cubic crystals could be sodium chloride, like table salt
- Bugscope Team sugar crystals, for example, do not form cubes like that
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Teacher okay...they want say bye and thanks for eveything
Bugscope Team thank you for using bugscope today! we hope you all had fun
- Bugscope Team Please come back next year and we will have something different to see.
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Bugscope Team you can go to your member page at https://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2010-074 to look over your chat and images from today whenever you want
- Teacher yes we did.....We learnt alot....It was really fun to see the insects up close
- 10:07am
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Teacher great
- Teacher thnks again....bye
- Bugscope Team shutting down... good bye! and thank you again!
- Teacher thamks
