Connected on 2010-10-14 10:00:00 from Skokie, IL, US
- 8:47am
- Bugscope Team Good morning!
- Bugscope Team we will start setup in a few minutes
- 8:53am
- Bugscope Team sample is in the chamber and pumping down
- 9:04am
- Bugscope Team grappling hook!
- 9:12am
- 9:18am
- 9:25am
- 9:31am
- 9:37am
- 9:42am
- 9:48am
- Bugscope Team We are ready to roll!
- 9:56am
- Bugscope Team Good morning!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team you should have control I think
- Bugscope Team and please let us know if you have any problems
- 10:03am
- Bugscope Team hello Mrs D!
- 10:10am
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- Teacher Got it!
- Teacher We'll start at the top.
- Bugscope Team Cool!
- Bugscope Team This is the fly haltere
- Teacher What is the haltere?
- Bugscope Team it's deflated; normally the thing in the foreground would be like a ball
- Teacher What does it do?
- Bugscope Team halteres are what flies (Diptera -- 'two wings') use to balance the motion of the wings in flight
- Bugscope Team they beat opposite the beat of the wings and help balance the fly in the air
- Bugscope Team you could compare them to the wasp wings, of which there are four
- Bugscope Team this is the shaft of the haltere
- Bugscope Team you can click with your mouse within the viewing screen and the microscope will move (center itself) to that place
- Bugscope Team looks good -- you are taking the mag down, and we can see the fly's abdomen as well as the wing on the right there
- Bugscope Team and some of the legs to the left
- 10:15am
- Bugscope Team the legs are attached to the thorax, not the abdomen, so we are actually looking at the thorax in the top half of the present view of the fly
- Bugscope Team so if you wanted to drive to the head, you could click in the upper left of the screen, and the 'scope should recenter itself in that direction
- Teacher Any chance we have the head?
Bugscope Team you bet!
- Bugscope Team closer...
- Bugscope Team there it is!
- Bugscope Team you can see the sort of teardrop shape of the compound eye on the right, there
- Bugscope Team there is a spiracle where we would expect the 'shoulder' to be; that is what insects use to breathe
- Bugscope Team this is the side of the face, and to the left we see some mouthparts
- Teacher Thank you! The children think this is awesome!
Bugscope Team totally cool!
- Bugscope Team you can see lots of tiny hairs, which are called 'setae,' pronounced see-tee
- Bugscope Team insects and other similar arthropods have exoskeletons, meaning that they have their 'bones' on the outside of the body, kind of like if we were wearing a suit of armor
- 10:21am
- Bugscope Team and if you had a suit of armor, your skin would not be able to sense anything touching it
- Bugscope Team so insects have a kind of suit of armor, and the setae stick through and function like little feelers that give them information about their surroundings
- Bugscope Team see the antenna, and the compound eye?
- Bugscope Team and to the right, we see the mandibles -- the ant's jaws
- Bugscope Team insect jaws open left and right, not like ours, and they are often like little gates
- Teacher Sammy wants to know how long does it take a queen ant to grow wings?
- Bugscope Team once an insect is an adult, if it is going to have wings, it has them at that time, and then it does not grow anymore
- Bugscope Team almost all ants are females, and the few males you see have wings
- 10:26am
- Bugscope Team here we can see the eye, with all of its tiny facets, called ommatidia, to the far upper left
- Bugscope Team ants respond to chemical signals, like smells, and those smells give them information about what to do when
- Teacher Jonny want to know what happens if the queen ant gets smushed, who takes care of the rest of the ants?
Bugscope Team sometimes that is a big problem, really, but usually there is another ant that will become a queen
Bugscope Team All ants share the same genetic code, even though the different types: worker, queen, and soldier can look very different. Which type they become just depends on environmental factors they're subjected to once they're born. I believe that if the ants need a new queen, what they do is simply groom one of the new larva to become a queen
- Teacher Technical question . . . Befcky wants to know how the microscope makes these pictures bigger and smaller?
Bugscope Team it's kind of cool, good question, Becky! what happens to make the images/pictures bigger or smaller is that if the electron beam is focussed on a small place the image that comes back is magnified, and if if is focussed on a large place the image we see is of the large place, and lower magnification
- 10:31am
- Teacher How long does it take an ant to hatch and grow into an adult?
Bugscope Team a few weeks, I think. it varies, of course. ants may grow to be soldiers, very large, or they may be workers, which are generally smaller
- Teacher Ariel wants to know what is the fastest bug that crawls? or flies?
Bugscope Team I don't know what crawls fastest, but the dragonfly is usually said to be the fastest flying insect
- Teacher Also, some children want to know what is the oldest bug?
Bugscope Team some insects that live in the Tropics can grow and grow; but think about the 17-year locusts -- they live for a long time as larvae until they pop up out of the ground. so at least 17 years
- Bugscope Team I read online that a queen ant was known to live for 25 years. Wow, that is a lot of eggs.
- Teacher What bug has been on earth the longest?
Bugscope Team you know it might be the dragonfly, I'm not sure
- 10:37am
- Bugscope Team mayflies and stoneflies are old species as well
- Teacher How many eggs does a queen ant lay/
Bugscope Team they will lay eggs continuously, so thousands and thousands are possible
- Teacher Amanda wants to know how many legs does a centipede have/
- Bugscope Team I checked, and it can take 8 to 12 weeks for an ant to go from an egg to its adult form
- Bugscope Team centipedes are said to always have an uneven number of pairs of legs, and they can range form 15 pairs to an unbelievable 171 pairs!
- 10:42am
- Teacher Gracie wants to know what is the difference between a wasp, a bee or a hornet?
Bugscope Team ha that is kind of a tough question to answer quickly. Bees are different from wasps, and I believe hornets and wasps are more closely related. one of the differences is in what they eat, and one is in how they live -- in colonies or solitary, for example
- Bugscope Team there are solitary bees, though; it gets complicated...
- Teacher We can"t seem to get the millipede
- Teacher Alex wants to know how many different kinds of bugs have stingers?
Bugscope Team ants sometimes have stingers and sometimes not, and wasps, and bees, and scorpions, and sometimes insects have ovipositors, which look like stingers and actually are, but they use them only to deposit eggs
- Bugscope Team there it is!
- Bugscope Team it just took awhile to show up
- 10:48am
- Bugscope Team I don't know how many legs it has, but there should be four per body segment
- Bugscope Team millipedes have two pairs of legs per segment
- Bugscope Team spider eyes!
- Teacher What are we looking at on this slide?
- Teacher Are there four eyes or two eyes on this spider?
- 10:53am
- Bugscope Team there are eight eyes!
- Bugscope Team and they are 'simple' eyes
- Bugscope Team you can see some web here too
- Teacher Do we have any slides that show the spinnerettes?
- Bugscope Team there are two spiders on this stub, but we did not see spinnerettes on the abdomen of the one I looked at earlier
- Teacher Do male spiders make webs?
Bugscope Team yes they can if they want to
- Bugscope Team there are many different types of spiders, and I believe they can all make web, but not all of them use web the same way
- 10:59am
- Teacher Is this something that the millipede uses to breathe from?
Bugscope Team we believe this is either a 'gill,' like roly polies have (they are crustaceans, like little crabs), or it is a spiracle, like insects breathe through.
- Bugscope Team it looks much like a spiracle
- Bugscope Team centipedes and millipedes also have poison ducts on some of their segments, but we think this is a breathing pore, or spiracle
- Teacher Elize wants to know how many different kinds of ladybugs are there in the world?
Bugscope Team there are said to be more than 5000 species of ladybugs in the world, and people are still finding more
- Bugscope Team here we see those spiracles, close to the bases of the hind legs, which I am sorry are broken off!
- Bugscope Team someone is waving to you
- Bugscope Team this is a lacewing, and I think it's one you sent for today
- Bugscope Team they eat aphids and small mites
- Teacher The children are all waving!
Bugscope Team Yay!
- 11:04am
- Bugscope Team see the compound eyes, with all of the eye facets -- the ommaitidia?
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes like that you would have very good peripheral vision
- Bugscope Team you would be able to see in almost every direction at one time
- Bugscope Team also, if you had compound eyes, it would be hard to buy sunglasses
- Teacher What are lacewings?
Bugscope Team lacewings are flying insects with delicate wings
- Teacher One final question regarding mosquitoes . . .since the female mosquitoes are the ones that drink our blood, what do the male mosquitoes eat?
Bugscope Team males live on nectar -- the sweet liquid flowers produce that also attracts ants and other insects, and some male mosquitoes may not eat at all
- Teacher Orrie wants to know how do the spiders make their webs?
Bugscope Team web is made of protein, and it is often also called 'silk.' it is not always sticky, and it comes from the spinnerettes; I believe it starts as a liquid and hardens into a string-like web when it hits the air as it leaves the spinnerettes
Bugscope Team It does start as a liquid, but it's not quite as simple as air-drying, which is why scientists are still trying to figure out how to make it in the lab. They think that there is a complicated physical and chemical interaction at the spinnerettes that actually transforms the liquid into silk
- Bugscope Team lacewings are helpful in the garden because they eat aphids, which are plant pests
- Teacher Thank you all sooo much! The children are thrilled and the teachers are very appreciative. W
- Teacher See you again next year!
- Bugscope Team This was really fun, and Yes we look forward to seeing you next year!
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- 11:10am
- Bugscope Team The lacewing is waving goodbye too, isn't it?
- Bugscope Team thank you again -- over and out!
- Bugscope Team Winner are you still there?
- Teacher Getting kids back to classroom. Anything else you need?
- Bugscope Team No, you did great. Thanks again
- Bugscope Team Mrs D we are trying to figure out how to send you a link to the members page so you can check it later if you want
- 11:15am
- Bugscope Team http://http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-090
- Bugscope Team whoops, http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-090
- Bugscope Team ha! thanks, Chas
- Bugscope Team bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-090
- Bugscope Team sorry, the url thing is broken at the moment, keeps adding an extra
- Bugscope Team http:// to the beginning
- Teacher Fabulous! Last year I printed the session and sent it home with kids. May save a tree this year!
- Bugscope Team that last one works
- Bugscope Team Mrs D we are shutting down -- our guest is apparently gone or not answering...
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
