Connected on 2010-10-27 09:00:00 from Williamston, MI, US
- 7:58am
- Bugscope Team sample is pumping down...
- 8:28am
- 8:34am
- 8:40am
- Bugscope Team we are making the presets now...
- Bugscope Team good morning, Wyatt!
- Guest good morning
- 8:46am
- Bugscope Team we're making the presets for today's session, which starts at 9 our time in Illinois
- 8:51am
- 8:58am
- Bugscope Team spider brochosomes
- Bugscope Team we are ready to roll!
- Bugscope Team good morning, Sara!
- Teacher Mornin' We're here...just getting ready.
- 9:03am
- Bugscope Team so this is one of the three ocelli on the top of the yellowjacket's head
- Bugscope Team one of the three 'simple' eyes
- Bugscope Team compared to the compound eyes, which you should be able to see at lower mag, and/or by clicking on the preset for the head of the yellowjacket
- Bugscope Team please let us know when you have questions or if you have any problems
- Bugscope Team these are very nice sample
- Bugscope Team heh samples
- Teacher okay...lots of questions from the kids. What are the "spikes?"
- Bugscope Team the spikes are 'setae' on the top of the head, and microsetae
- Bugscope Team setae, pronounced see-tee, are sensory
- Teacher what are they for?
Bugscope Team they are there to help the insect know when it is bumping into things
- Bugscope Team setae can be mechanosensory, letting the insect know if wind is blowing on it or something is touching it
- Bugscope Team they can also be thermosensory, letting the insect know if something is hot or cold
- 9:08am
- Bugscope Team and as Cate says, some setae are chemosensory, allowing the insect to smell/taste its environment
- Bugscope Team you can see the compound eyes now, and the mandibles, which open like a gate, from side to side, and the antennae
- Teacher we love the image of the yellowjacket's compound eyes!!! how many lenses make up a compund eye?
Bugscope Team there may be 3000 to 5000 lenses in those particular eyes; that is an estimate, but people have counted them before
- Bugscope Team the individual facets -- the lenses -- are called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team now we see the front of the head, and the little leaf-like things we see are scales
- Teacher what are the black specks?
Bugscope Team those are where scales used to sit before they were blown off at some point
- Bugscope Team they didn't belong to the insect, but were probably in a container with a moth or butterfly
- Bugscope Team yes! you can see where the scales shifted or were blown off of the surface of the head -- they don't belong to the wasp
- Bugscope Team ha Cate beat me to it
- 9:14am
- Teacher matthew wants to know more about how the mouth work? Is there just an opening behind the mandibles?
Bugscope Team yes! the mouth opens from side to side like a gate, and behind it is the opening of the mouth
- Bugscope Team insect jaws -- the mandibles -- open sideways compared to our jaws
- Bugscope Team your lower jaw is called a mandible, and your upper jaw, attached to your skull, is called a maxilla
- Bugscope Team some of the stuff we see on the proboscis is pollen
- Teacher Hannah is checking out the proboscis. She wonders how it curls up?
Bugscope Team that is its "resting point". When it wants to use it, hemolypmph (bug blood) fills it up and causes it to open up. It's like those new years noise makers you blow into
- Teacher Luke wants to know how long the proboscis is when it's stretched out?
- Teacher Is the pollen the stuff that looks like dust?
Bugscope Team no I think all that stuff are scales
- Bugscope Team the proboscis could be several millimeters long, maybe 7 or 8, or more
- 9:19am
- Bugscope Team hemolymph is the blood-like fluid inside the butterfly's body cavity
- Teacher Are these more setaes behind the proboscis?
Bugscope Team there are more setae, and there are scales that are long and narrow like setae as well
- Bugscope Team if you are a butterfly or a moth (or mosquito or silverfish, or very few weevils and beetles), scales are good things to have if you fly or walk into a spider web. You can let the scales stick to the web and slip out, if you are lucky.
- Bugscope Team scales also help give you the color pattern on your wings. they have both pigment colors and colors that come just from their shape, called structural colors
- 9:24am
- Teacher cool!! What's up with the mosquito eye? Are those the lenses? They look squishy!
Bugscope Team those are the lenses, and they are dry so theyt have shriveled a little since the mosquito was alive. if you look at the male mosquito, his ommatidia -- the lenses, -- still look nice and plump
- Bugscope Team this is the fine structure of one of the ommatidia. many other insects, even flying ones, do not have those tiny features
- Bugscope Team so you can tell this is a male mosquito because it has super frilly antennae
- Bugscope Team you can see that the compound eyes are nice and plump, and that is actually because of the way we processed a few of the mosquitoes
- Bugscope Team the male has a proboscis like the female, but males do not drink blood, only the females do
- 9:29am
- Teacher We love this one!!!!! Erin wonders what the round hole is with stuff sticking out of it?
Bugscope Team that is called a 'pedicel,' and it is the base of the antenna
- Bugscope Team the stuff sticking out is the antenna
- Bugscope Team we like to nickname the pedicel as the donut or giant red blood cell
- Bugscope Team when we prepare an insect this way, by critical point drying it, sometimes we see some of the debris you see now, the fine dust on the eye facets
- Bugscope Team yeah in the morning, especially, the pedicel looks so much like a donut!
- Teacher So what is between the antennae? And are these more setae?
Bugscope Team you can see setae now that let the mosquito know when its proboscis might be bumping into its eyes
- Bugscope Team now we are looking at a beetle's mouth, and it is very complicated
- Bugscope Team at the top we see the mandibles, which are long and curved; one overlaps the other
- 9:35am
- Teacher Yes it is! Stephen wonders what the big black spot is?
Bugscope Team I think that, at top left, is the entrance to the mouth. We don't often see it clearly.
- Bugscope Team the little limb-like things are called palps, and there are two sets of two of them
- Teacher Max wonders what the arm-like parts are?
- Teacher You beat us to it!!!
- Bugscope Team palps are either mandibular or maxillary, but I don't know how to tell them apart
- Bugscope Team they are accessory mouthparts that the beetle uses to manipulate its food, and also to taste it
- Bugscope Team it looked to me like the beetle had more than one set of jaws
- Teacher We have unique beetles here in MI!
- Bugscope Team you can tell that this is 'live' imaging, because the sample had moved a little after we made that last preset
- Teacher Are these "dots" or holes on the scales?
Bugscope Team yes they make the scales lighter and also light refracts off them making the scales have color
- Teacher And what are the ridges?
Bugscope Team probably there as like structures to help the scales break
- 9:40am
- Bugscope Team those holes are nanometers big! Like the wavelengths of light
- Bugscope Team these are funny-looking elongated flies we have here in the summertime
- Bugscope Team I would not want to count the ommatidia on each compound eye.
- Teacher Conner wonders what are the specks on the fly eyes? Is the sponging mouthpart really sponge-like
- Bugscope Team there is some dust and maybe other insect debris on it
- Teacher Lexi wonders what is between the eyes?
- Bugscope Team this is an odd-looking mouthpart; it doesn't look like other sponging mouthparts we have seen, but it may have a 'glossa,' like a tongue, beneath those folded portions of the proboscis.
- 9:45am
- Bugscope Team yeah people usually wonder if they're nostrils
- Teacher Sky is wondering about the holes between the eyes?
Bugscope Team we see those sometimes, and we are not sure what they are. we'll have to spend more time with the entomologists and see if we can get a good answer
- Bugscope Team just a sec and I will try to focus this better...
- Bugscope Team there!
- Bugscope Team if you take the magnification down maybe we can tell
- Teacher How big is a spider's egg?
Bugscope Team couple millimeters big at most
- Bugscope Team they are very beautiful up close\
- Bugscope Team rolypolies are crustaceans, like crabs and lobsters
- Teacher we wonder how you even go about finding a spider's egg?!
Bugscope Team they have egg sacs, which are much bigger and are easier to find
- 9:50am
- Teacher Hannah is curious about the claws? Are they sharp?
Bugscope Team the claws are sharp but they are tiny, so it would just tickle your skin
- Teacher Matthew wonders what the pointy things are on the legs? More setae?
- Teacher Brock wonders if they have two tips?
Bugscope Team I think there is usually one 'normal' tip, but we see that there are also some setae sticking out that make it look like a double tip. Rolypolies are called 'isopods' because all of their little feet are the same shape.
- Bugscope Team here we see two sets of claws, which open and close to grasp things
- Teacher Cool! We are flying through images now...Do you kick us off at 10?
Bugscope Team we can run a little longer if you would like
- Teacher Are these its legs?
- Teacher YAY! Luke is wondering how many of these claws this beetle has!?
Bugscope Team insects have claws on each of its legs
- Bugscope Team we have a tour at 11:45 our time, so you can run over no problem. it is about 5 'til 10 here.
- Bugscope Team insects always have six legs
- 9:56am
- Teacher THANK YOU! We have to leave at 11:15 our time...so 10 extra minutes would be perfect!
- Teacher Brady wonders if insects have necks?? (He also wonders how they eliminate waste?)
Bugscope Team I think you could say that some insects have necks and some appear not to. The male mosquito looked like it had a neck between its head and its thorax. But a ladybug? Not so sure.
- Bugscope Team About eliminating waste, insects are much like people that way. Often their waste may be more dry, because they need to conserve water.
- Bugscope Team dragonflies look like they have necks, and spiders definitely dont look like they have necks
Bugscope Team ha That is right! Spiders have their head and body stuck together; it's called a cephalothorax.
- Bugscope Team insects have six legs, a head, a thorax, and an abdomen, and I believe they always have two antennae as well.
- Teacher Matthew wonders about how a compund eye works and how it helps them?
Bugscope Team compound eyes are especially useful for flying insects. The eyes can cover up most of the head area on them. The eyes gives them almost a 360 degree view and we think maybe all the facets help them see movement around them much faster
- Bugscope Team Their legs always come out of the thorax. If you start, for example, comparing an insect to a lobster -- lobsters have two sets of antennae, and of course they have gills.
- 10:01am
- Teacher oops, i mean predators!
- Teacher Luke wonders if setaes can be used to help fend off prey?
Bugscope Team definitely! There are caterpillars with long spikey hair that birds dont want to eat because they get stuck in their throats, and spiders can throw their hair at things to make them itchy
- Bugscope Team the tiny setae we see now, in the middle of this area, are called 'tenent setae,' and they help the insect stick to walls and ceilings.
- Bugscope Team tenent setae are sticky
- Teacher So both of this roly poly's antennae are missing and these are the doughnuts....?
- Bugscope Team the rolypoly has compound eyes, but you rarely see them. today we see them at the edges of the hood-like head
- Bugscope Team yes
- Teacher Or donuts...?:)
Bugscope Team when the antennae pop out, they are sometimes confused for eyes too
- Bugscope Team I just drove us to the compound eye, one of them...
- Bugscope Team this mosquito might have just had a blood meal, but she got caught by the spider.
- Bugscope Team see how her abdomen is swollen?
- 10:06am
- Bugscope Team those big flat arms are the spider's arms
- Teacher This is realy cool.
- Bugscope Team the little arms are those of the mosquito, and you can see its head between the large arms, to the right middle of where we are now
- Teacher Carter wonders if the "hairs" on spiders are all poisonous?
Bugscope Team not all of the spider's hairs are poisonous, or irritating; many of the hairs, or setae, are sensory -- very good at picking up vibration.
- Bugscope Team this is a serious bigboy stinkbug
- Bugscope Team stinkbugs are 'true bugs,' which have piercing/sucking mouthparts, among other distinctions
- Teacher ha! why does its body look furry?
Bugscope Team there are some hairs on it, but there is also a lot of some oily substance on it too
- 10:11am
- Teacher We have to head out..!!! This was AWESOME and we look forward to doing it again!!!! Thank you SO much!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team We had a good time working with you and hope to see you again for sure.
- Teacher These images and the conversation will be available on my page, r\ight?
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-095
- Bugscope Team thank you for using bugscope with us this morning!
- Bugscope Team yes they are
- Bugscope Team yes they will
- Teacher We're sad to sign off....thank you!!!
- Teacher Bye
