Connected on 2010-09-02 13:30:00 from Memphis, TN, US
- 1:21pm
- Bugscope Team We are ready to roll!
- Bugscope Team this is a female mosquito, sans antennae
- 1:26pm
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team hutch we gave you control, and the session is unlocked if you would like to drive around
- Student Thank you!!
- Bugscope Team the compound eye is caved in -- happens when the mosquito dies and it starts to dry out
- Bugscope Team this is the proboscis
- Bugscope Team inside is the fascicle
- Bugscope Team actually you can see part of the fascicle
- Bugscope Team this is the face, obviously -- the donut like things are the pedicels: the bases of the antennae
- Bugscope Team that is a spiracle
- Bugscope Team the hole is a spiracle
- Bugscope Team in the thorax
- 1:31pm
- Bugscope Team the wings and legs are attached to the thorax
- Bugscope Team you can see that most of the scales have come off of the head and the body
- Bugscope Team mosquitoes, butterflies, moths, skippers, silverfish, and some weevils plus a very few beetles have scales
- Bugscope Team this leg is covered with scales
- Bugscope Team scales are kind of analogous to feathers
- Student Do you know why the stinger is hairy?
Bugscope Team the part that bites -- that sucks your blood -- is inside the sheath you see coming out of the mouth
- 1:36pm
- Bugscope Team the part that bites is called the fascicle, and the proboscis is a sheath covering it, but it is slit all along one side
- Bugscope Team the fascicle is often, as today, covered up. but it has at least 4 thin cutting blades, a siphon tube that collects blood and also delivers saliva, and another component I am not sure about
- Bugscope Team these are ommatidia -- some of the facets of the eye
- Bugscope Team when the mosquito is alive the ommatidia are swollen and round
- Bugscope Team only the female mosquitoes suck blood
- Bugscope Team this is totally cool
- Bugscope Team that is a mite living on the exoskeleton -- the shell -- of the earwig
- Student Is this bug you brought?
Bugscope Team yes this one came from us
- Bugscope Team there are a lot of these mites living on this dirty earwig
- Bugscope Team I think it came from my house
- Bugscope Team the little spikes are called 'setae.'
- Student What is the hauli?
Bugscope Team hamuli are hooks that wasps and bees have that they use to hook their fore- and hind-wings together with so that they seem like one wing when they fly
- Bugscope Team insects and other similar arthropods have exoskeletons, kind of like if you wore armor all of the tim
- 1:42pm
- Bugscope Team time
- Bugscope Team bee face
- Bugscope Team you can see the jaws at the top of that inverted triangle
- Bugscope Team the inverted triangle is the covering of the glossa, which is the tongue
- Bugscope Team the bee has 'hairy' compound eyes
- Bugscope Team insects sense their environment using their antennae, and the little setae all over their bodies
- Student Do you know what we're looking at?
Bugscope Team the bubbly stuff you see is the background made of sticky carbon tape that we stick the insects to
- Bugscope Team the setae can be chemoreceptors, which allow them to smell the air and detect pheromones or food smells, and mechanoreceptors, which sense touch, and thermoreceptors, which can sense hot/cold
- Bugscope Team to the lower right is the edge of the honeybee
- 1:47pm
- Bugscope Team the earwig is to the left, where we cannot see it now, and the mosquito is past that
- Bugscope Team this is really nice
- Bugscope Team this is how the bee keeps its antennae clean
- Bugscope Team a custom scraper for the antenna
- Bugscope Team this is one of the six claws of this ant
- Bugscope Team or six sets of claws...
- Bugscope Team between the claws is the arolium, which is puffed up in life
- Bugscope Team like an inflatable ball, it helps the ant hold onto crevices, for example
- Bugscope Team here's the little ant
- Bugscope Team so lovely...
- Bugscope Team one from our collection
- Bugscope Team see its jaws?
- 1:52pm
- Bugscope Team in insects the jaws go from side to side; they open like a gate
- Bugscope Team unlike the way our mandibles work
- Bugscope Team whoa!
- Bugscope Team a serious stinger
- Bugscope Team ovipositors are the extended tubes through which insects may lay their eggs
- Bugscope Team and stingers are modified ovipositors; sometimes they are both at the same time
- Bugscope Team some parasitic wasps sting their caterpillar prey and them inject eggs into their bodies
- Bugscope Team and *then* inject eggs
- Bugscope Team this is a damselfly, kind of like a dragonfly
- 1:58pm
- Student Are the big round balls the eyes?
Bugscope Team yes they are! they are quite big aren't they
- Bugscope Team the horizontal lines we see across the view of the underside of the damselfly's head are from the head charging up with electrons
- Bugscope Team we just saw a little bit of one of the wing scales from the moth, or butterfly
- Bugscope Team the wing scales are kind of like feathers, and they give the wings their color. they are also very useful in helping the insect avoid being caught in spiderwebs
- 2:03pm
- Bugscope Team now we are looking at a very few of the thousands of facets of the compound eye of this moth
- Student What is a moth cone?
Bugscope Team human eyes are composed of rods and cones. Those are what we think to be in that image
- Bugscope Team this is what the inside of a compound eye looks like
- Student What is the spinnerette?
Bugscope Team the spinneret (another spelling) is where the spider's silk comes from
- Bugscope Team silk = web
- Bugscope Team spiders often recycle their webs by eating them
- Bugscope Team ooh
- Bugscope Team that's because the web is made of proteins
- Bugscope Team you can see more of those plumose setae, and beneath them you see one of the spider's claws
- Student What is the plumose setae?
Bugscope Team those are special hairs that spiders have that are specialized in feeling vibrations like when a prey lands in their web
- 2:09pm
- Bugscope Team the shape of the setae -- the plume-like shape -- ensures that they are able to detect vibration very efficiently
- Student Do you know what this is?
- Bugscope Team now what you see is some of the venom as a drop at the base of the spider's fang
- Bugscope Team all spiders inject venom into their prey using the fangs, one of which we see above.
- Bugscope Team the venom dissolves the insides of the prey, and the spiders suck all of that back up like a milkshake
- 2:14pm
- Bugscope Team the fangs are curved inward and found at the ends of the chelicers, or chelicerae.
- Bugscope Team the tube we see to the right is the proboscis of the mosquito
- Bugscope Team it is, as you noted earlier, covered with scales
- Bugscope Team but inside, the parts that cut into your skin are smooth, and at their ends they are serrated like steak knives
- Bugscope Team here we are able to see a bit of the smooth fascicle the female mosquito uses to cut into your skin and suck your blood
- Bugscope Team otherwise, with all of the scales, you know it would not make a good hypodermic syringe
- Bugscope Team see how the scales are similar to those of the moth?
- 2:20pm
- Student They love this!
Bugscope Team that's great! We really enjoy doing this too
- Bugscope Team as we had mentioned earlier, having scales can be an advantage when you fly into a spiderweb, because they can stick and you -- the rest of you -- might be able to slip away
- Student They love how the eye is popping out!
- Bugscope Team those little furry donut like things are called pedicels
- Bugscope Team they look like eyes, but they are actually the bases of the antennae
- Bugscope Team the antennae have fallen off
- Student wow!
- Bugscope Team all of the little wrinkled things behind them -- to the left, mostly -- are the eye facets
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes it would be hard to get sunglasses, but you would have very good peripheral vision. people would not be able to sneak up on you very easily.
- Student Why are some of the slits open and some are c losed?
Bugscope Team these are wrinkles in what are supposed to be round ommatidia. When the insect dies, it deflates a little
- 2:25pm
- Bugscope Team also, because there are so many individual lenses, and we see a few wrinkled ones now, you would be able to perceive motion very quickly
- Student So usually they are all open?
Bugscope Team yes in a way they are always open because mosquitoes, and all other insects, do not have eyelids
- Student Thank you all for this session! The girls loved it! They all say thank you!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team thank you for using bugscope today!
- Bugscope Team this is really fun for us, as Cate said
