Connected on 2011-03-09 08:00:00 from Alderson, WV, US
- 7:04am
- Bugscope Team sample is being coated...
- 7:10am
- Bugscope Team and sample is now in the microscope, in the vacuum chamber
- Bugscope Team vacuum is getting better...
- 7:18am
- Bugscope Team almost...
- 7:24am
- 7:30am
- 7:36am
- Bugscope Team now making presets
- 7:42am
- 7:47am
- Bugscope Team Good morning!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- 7:52am
- Bugscope Team we are finishing up the presets
- Bugscope Team please let us know if you have any questions
- Teacher Good Morning! We are very excited!
- Bugscope Team yay!
- Bugscope Team I will be right back and we can get started.
- 7:57am
- Bugscope Team you can start driving the 'scope as soon as you wish
- Teacher Thanks, we'll try it!
- Bugscope Team ha cool okay I am back
- Bugscope Team you see that you can change mag, you can move the sample if you click within the screen. you can change focus and contrast/brightness...
- Bugscope Team also -- you can choose from any of the presets on the screen to the left just by clicking on one
- Bugscope Team the 'scope will drive to that place
- Bugscope Team here you can see that one antenna is missing, or folded back the other way
- Bugscope Team sweet!
- Bugscope Team this is the head of the moth
- Bugscope Team you can see its compound eye, so round
- Bugscope Team and you can see its proboscis, which is coiled up when it is not being used to gather nectar from flowers
- Bugscope Team they cant really turn their heads so they have big round eyes to help them see around
- Bugscope Team also, you can see that the moth is covered with scales
- Bugscope Team yeah it is like a little no-neck monster
- 8:02am
- Bugscope Team and speaking of monsters...
- Bugscope Team this is the rolypoly, which is not an insect -- it is a crustacean!
- Bugscope Team like a crab
- Bugscope Team rolypolies are related to shrimps and lobsters and crabs, as Cate said
- Bugscope Team they have gills, but we are not sure exactly what they look like
- Bugscope Team the gills are said to be adjacent to the last sets of legs
- Bugscope Team this is one of the legs
- Bugscope Team rolypolies are isopods
- Bugscope Team iso- means 'the same,' like it does in an isosceles triangle
- Bugscope Team and -pod means 'leg' or 'foot'
- Bugscope Team so in rolypolies all of the tiny feet are the same
- Bugscope Team the gills are located by the base of the legs
- Bugscope Team please be sure to let us know when you have questions, and let us know if you have any trouble driving...
- Bugscope Team gills must be kept moist, which is why you usually find them in moist areas, like under rocks
- 8:08am
- Teacher We're wondering why they roll up...
Bugscope Team they roll up to protect themselves from predators
- Bugscope Team they're kind of like armadillos
- Bugscope Team the genus name is Armdillidium
- Teacher We are really surprised-we would have never connected these bugs to crabs OR armadillos!
- Teacher And why do they have pointy things on their legs?
Bugscope Team those are their tiny feet, and in the environment in which they live it is a good shape for getting around
- Bugscope Team I read that sometimes people who keep pet tarantulas also have rolypolies in the same enclosures to help keep the enclosure clean
- Teacher What do they like to eat?
Bugscope Team they are said to eat the waste of other animals, mold, and leftovers
- Bugscope Team as Cate said, they like very moist areas, and they like the light to be subdued
- Bugscope Team they are the waste management bugs
Bugscope Team ha yeah!
- 8:14am
- Teacher When they leave their homes, how do they know how to get back? (Do they have homes?)
Bugscope Team I don't think they are very territorial, not like some spiders, for example. And they have what appear to us to be very poor eyes.
- Bugscope Team ants leave chemical trails that help them get back or alert other ants to where the food is
- Bugscope Team I think they are content to live under rocks and in leaf litter, where they find plenty to eat
- Teacher Great! We're moving on to another
- Bugscope Team right now you can see the scale bar reads about the width of a human hair
- Bugscope Team this is the compound eye of the cranefly you sent us
- 8:19am
- Teacher Woah! Amazing!
- Bugscope Team the facets of the compound eye are called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team some large wasps, for example, may have 5000 ommatidia per compound eye
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes you would see lots of individual images of the same thing, but from slightly different directions
- Bugscope Team it would be hard for you to buy sunglasses if you had compound eyes
- Teacher Heh heh
- Bugscope Team but you would be able to see changes in your visual field very quickly, so if someone tried to catch you, you would register that motion immediately
- Bugscope Team some insects' compound eyes are very minimal -- for example the rolypoly, whose compound eyes we could not see today, has only perhaps 10 or so ommatidia
- Bugscope Team ants sometimes have very few ommatidia, and some ants do not have eyes at all
- 8:24am
- Bugscope Team insects and comparable athropods (arthropods have jointed body components) do not have bones; instead they have an exoskeleton.
- Teacher "It looks like Texas!" "The ocean!"
- Bugscope Team it's like their skeleton is on the outside -- like a shell, or like a suit of armor
- Bugscope Team this is on the thorax of the cranefly
- Bugscope Team haha
- Bugscope Team because insects have a shell, or armor, on the outside of the body, they need to have tiny hairs., called 'setae,' to help them sense their enivironment
- Bugscope Team they dont have the sensitive skin that we have
- Bugscope Team so one of the first things we discover about insects, when we get to see them at this level of magnification, is that they are very 'hairy'
- Teacher What time of year do insects come out of their homes? Do they hibernante?
- 8:29am
- Bugscope Team some insects do seem to hibernate. for example, here in Illinois the Asian beetles come into our houses to overwinter
- Bugscope Team some hibernate. Ladybugs like to hibernate through the winter in my home. The monarch butterfly migrates to stay warm, and a lot of household insects live for years
- Bugscope Team if it is warm all of the time, insects do not usually hibernate. but they do have a behavior that is similar to sleeping
- Bugscope Team really in part it depends on where they live
- Teacher we have the Asian beetle here too!
- Bugscope Team Monarchs like to eat milkweed, which is poisonous to most other animals. They are not affected by the toxins in milkweed, but other animals will not eat them because they have the toxin in their bodies.
- Bugscope Team you all did a great job sending us such cool insects when it's so cold out
- Bugscope Team Spiders are said to cut Monarchs out of their webs because they cannot eat them.
- Bugscope Team and of course Monarchs have those brilliant colors, which are in part an advertisement to potential predators that they are not good to eat.
- 8:34am
- Bugscope Team actually ladybugs also do not taste good, and they often have bright colors as well\
- Bugscope Team this is a wasp you sent -- it is so cool-looking
- Bugscope Team you can see that its mandibles go sideways, compared to ours
- Bugscope Team the mandibles, or jaws, open side to side, like a gate
- Bugscope Team but insects have very complicated mouths, and there are also chewing parts, often, that go up and down
- Bugscope Team you can see, also, that the wasp has little 'feelers,' four of them, that come out of the lower portion of its mouth area
- Teacher Do you think bugs dream?
Bugscope Team I dont think so. When they do sleep their bodies kind of shut out the stimulus and shut down. If there is enough stimulus they can wake right back up again. I could be wrong. Mammals dream, that's for sure
- Bugscope Team the feelers are called 'palps.'
- Bugscope Team palps help the insect taste and also direct its food into its mouth
- 8:40am
- Teacher Do wasps have a special way of finding their way home?
Bugscope Team they respond to chemical signals that the other wasps send out. That is why it is not a good idea to disturb one wasp, because it can send a signal to the others to come and help
- Bugscope Team the tiny hairs, or bristles, or setae that we see on the surface of the exoskeleton, are often sensory
- Bugscope Team also, wasps have three extra 'simple' eyes called ocelli on the tops of their heads
Bugscope Team they are hiding behind the antennae right now
- Bugscope Team the ocelli sense light but do not focus well
- Bugscope Team the ocelli -- the 'simple' eyes -- help the wasp, and also bees and some other flying insects, keep their orientation with respect to the light from the sun
- Bugscope Team so the wasps can find their way home in part due to their ability to keep track of direction using their ocellli
- Bugscope Team here we can see one of the wasp's six sets of claws, one for each leg
- Bugscope Team insects have six legs, a head, a thorax, and an abdomen
- Bugscope Team the legs are all attached to the thorax, which is kind of like our chest and trunk area combined
- Bugscope Team the abdomen is kind of like a stomach
- 8:46am
- Bugscope Team between the claws here is an inflatable feature called an 'arolium' that can inflate/deflate to help the wasp maintain a grip on the surface it lands on
- Bugscope Team some claws, like this, can be opened and closed, like tiny hands
- Teacher How does a wasp sting?
Bugscope Team usually the stinger/ovipositor will be in the abdomen and when it's needed, the wasp extends it, and the ridges on the stinger will help cut into the skin like a steak knife. It then deposits some venom
- Bugscope Team we could go to the wasp's abdomen now, but the stinger is not visible -- I checked earlier
- Bugscope Team sometimes the stinger seems to be a single needle-like shaft, and sometimes it is super sharp but also divided into halves that slide against each other to cut into your skin
- Teacher grab
- Teacher Can a wasp grap tiny things with its tiny claw?
Bugscope Team yes it can!
- 8:51am
- Bugscope Team sometimes we see that tiny insects have indeed grabbed things with their claws
- Teacher cool!
- Bugscope Team there is a tendon inside the tarsi (the tarsi are the 'forearm' segments of the limb) called an unguitractor that pulls to close the claw and releases to open the claw
- Bugscope Team sometimes we can tell if an insect might or might not be able walk on a wall or on the ceiling by looking at the segments of its limbs
- Bugscope Team that super tiny crystal is on the earwig's antenna, and after we made the preset this morning, the antenna shifted a bit
- Teacher We're curious about this one. Is the crystal the pointy thing?
Bugscope Team yes it kind of looks like a bird
- Bugscope Team it is very odd; we have never seen one quite like this
- Teacher What sort of crystal do you think it might be?
- 8:57am
- Bugscope Team sodium chloride (table salt) makes cubic crystals, so we think it is not likely to be that kind of crystal
- Bugscope Team sugars make more oddly shaped crystals, but still we do not know just what this might be
- Bugscope Team many insects use chemicals as defenses against predators, which often seem to be ants
- Teacher That's exciting.Well, unfortunately it's time for us to go. But this has been really fabulous. Thank you so much!
- Teacher We'll really remeber this!
- Bugscope Team so the crystal may be an aldehyde or some other chemical that the earwig uses to deter ants
- Bugscope Team you're welcome! thanks for using bugscope with us this morning
- Bugscope Team These are the cercopods of a female earwig.
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-094
- Bugscope Team that is your member page so you can take a look at this later
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-094
- Bugscope Team that is the same page without the 's'
- Teacher Wonderful! Thanks so much!
- Bugscope Team Thank You for working with us today!
- Bugscope Team See you next year!
