Connected on 2011-08-10 10:00:00 from Harris, Texas, United States
- 8:52am
- Bugscope Team good morning, HANC!
- Bugscope Team Welcome back to Bugscope!
- Teacher Good morning. We're just checking our computer and watching y'all!
- Bugscope Team We are pumping the sample down. Once the 'scope reaches vacuum, we'll start the presets.
- Bugscope Team For a few minutes you could see into the room where the 'scope is.
- Bugscope Team Now we're waiting...
- Teacher Okay. We'll be back about 10 to get started. We'll have 3 classes coming through today. First the 7 and 8 year olds, then the 9-12 year olds and last the 5 and 6 year olds. So if you get repeat questions you'll know why.
- Bugscope Team hey no problem with repeat questions, of course
- 8:57am
- Bugscope Team and it all sounds good from here!
- Bugscope Team we are close to being able to bring the beam up
- 9:13am
- 9:20am
- 9:25am
- 9:31am
- 9:36am
- 9:43am
- 9:53am
- Teacher The 7 and 8 year olds are getting ready to come in. I'm gettingour projector up and we'll be ready to go too.
- Bugscope Team ok sounds great!
- Bugscope Team this is a wasp
- Teacher Thanks. I'm going to go ahead and start with this one but then move to the spiders. Our camp this week is all about spiders but we've talked about other arthropods as well. If you have any great spider knowledge we'd love to hear it!
- Bugscope Team we will do our best
- 10:00am
- Teacher Dylan wants to know why wasps have hair.
Bugscope Team a lot of insects have hair actually. Hair found on insects is actually called setae (pronounced see-tee). The hair allows them to sense what is going on around it in its environment. They dont have sensitive skin like we do.
- Bugscope Team the hairs allow insects to feel when things are close like cat whiskers, or to feel temperature or wind changes, and some help with taste and smell
- Teacher Harper wants to know if the lines above the fangs are hairs
Bugscope Team yes there are hairs around the mouth, probably to help with sense of touch
- 10:05am
- Teacher Will wants to know what the rectangularish piece under the fangs is
Bugscope Team there is some crusty stuff that could be from the spider puking when it died. Kind of looks like giant skin flakes here i guess
- Teacher Nicholas wants to know what the part under the fangs is. the large part
- Teacher Layla wants to clarify that those are fangs and are the pedipalps visible.
Bugscope Team Sorry I had to remove the pedipalps. They were in the way of the fangs. But the long things crossing each other and going into the black of the mouth are the fangs
- Bugscope Team you can see large bumps above and below the fangs that help the spider hold its prey tightly while it pierces it with its fangs
- Bugscope Team all spiders feed by injecting venom into their prey that dissolves the inner organs of the prey. the spider can then suck all of that up like a milkshake.
- Teacher do you know what kind of spider this is?
Bugscope Team we are not very good at identifying spiders. Sorry.
- Teacher Natalie wants to know if that is more hair around the eyes.
Bugscope Team yes. spiders can be very hairy!
- Bugscope Team the spider must not be affected by its own venom, but spiders can sense when another spider has bitten them, for example if one if their legs has been bitten and venom is coursing into that leg. the spider can then let the leg fall off before the venom enters the cephalothorax (the head/chest/body)
- 10:11am
- Teacher I'm having trouble manuevering. Is it possible to magnify the eye even more?
- Bugscope Team when a spider makes its leg fall off, it does not die but just has fewer legs. the process is called 'autotomy'
- Teacher Miss Lucy wants to know if they can regrow their legs
Bugscope Team if the spider has more molts left in its lifetime it can. When it comes out of its old body, it will have all its limbs again. Tarantulas live longer than little house spiders so they molt more as adults
- Teacher Harper wants to know if this is the front of the eye. We studied wolf spiders with eyes on the top of their heads. Is this on the top or in the front?
Bugscope Team yes I believe this is one of the front eyes
- Teacher Will wants to know what the particles on the hairs are. Is it dust or something?
Bugscope Team they are most likely dust or dirt
- Bugscope Team yes this is one of the front eyes -- usually spiders have eight eyes, but if we want to see the fangs we are so forward on the head that we cannot see all of the eyes.
- Bugscope Team this is a compound eye, compared to the simple eyes you find on a spider.
- 10:16am
- Bugscope Team although some spiders see very well, most do not. they rely much more on the vibrations they are able to feel because of the hundreds/thousands of setae (hairs) on their bodies.
- Bugscope Team compound eyes give insects a few advantages. one is that the curved shape (sometimes all around the head, as with the wasp) gives them very good peripheral vision, meaning that they can see more of what is around them without having to turn their heads
- Bugscope Team also, compound eyes (Cate may mention this) give the insect the ability to see changes in the visual field more quickly, meaning that they see movement more quickly and can thus respond fast
- Teacher Glorielys wants to know what ants see. She knows that they have lots of different parts in their eyes so she is wondering if they see hundreds of images at once.
Bugscope Team yes each part, called an ommatidium, will see an image. They are collected and sent back to the brain to be pieced together. This is very similar to how our eyes work. Each eye will see an image and they are collected together into one image
- Teacher Will wants to know what the thing to the right of the antenna is it kind of looks flaky
Bugscope Team that is a scale from a moth or butterfly probably
- Teacher Layla wants to know what the part is that is below and to the left of the eye. Looks like a crack
Bugscope Team that is the edge of the mandibles
- Bugscope Team moths, butterflies, mosquitoes, silverfish, and very few other insects have scales, which are actually modified setae (what look to us like hairs)
- 10:21am
- Bugscope Team scales are what give the pattern to a butterfly's wings, and they are also what makes the wings feel so silky when you rub them
- Bugscope Team the scales come off easily, and to us they seem like powder
- Teacher Cameron wants to know how many little dots are on the ant's eye
Bugscope Team you could try counting them, but we can't see the whole thing so it wouldn't be a very good guess. Ant eyes are much smaller than say the wasp eye, and that is because they don't rely on their eyes very much. You wouldn't even want to think about counting the wasp eye!
- Teacher Harperwants to know what the lines on the antenna are
Bugscope Team the antenna has segments, kind of like a knight's armor that folds at his wrists, elbows, and shoulders
- Bugscope Team the segments make the antenna flexible
- Bugscope Team the antennae also have tiny setae on them as well as sensilla that allow them to sniff the air and tell what smells there are as well as where they might be coming from
- Teacher The class wants to know what a Mexican jumping bean is
Bugscope Team They are a seed pod through which the larva of a small moth has chewed. The bean "jumps" because when it gets in a hot place the larva snaps its body hoping to roll to a cooler place.
- 10:27am
- Teacher Is the trap door what it comes out of or does it go in and out?
Bugscope Team it comes out of the trap door. Not sure how it comes in
- Teacher Can we see the larva on this picture or just the opening?
Bugscope Team the moth has developed already and 'flown the coop'
- Bugscope Team I think that once they come out they do not go back in again
- Bugscope Team what comes out looks to us like a normal small moth\
- Bugscope Team we have a small moth on this stub today -- a very nice one -- but it is not the one that came out of the jumping bean
- Bugscope Team here we can see the ommatidia -- the facets -- of a fly's compound eye
- Bugscope Team the things that look like little bottles are mold spores
- Teacher thanks for all your help. The 7 and 8 year olds will be leaving and the 5 and 6 year olds will be coming in. Thanks!
- Bugscope Team there is also a lot of juju on the ommatidia -- a lot of junk'
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team Bye everyone!
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Teacher Hi. This is Lois. The 5/6 year old teacher. We will be ready in a few minutes.
- 10:34am
- Bugscope Team Great!
- Bugscope Team Hi Lois!
- 10:39am
- Teacher What is the thing that looks like a string above the lens?
Bugscope Team the big long thing is the antenna. It is elbowed, with the first part being smoother than the part that is coming towards the screen, which is segmented
- Bugscope Team you can see lots of tiny hairs called microsetae on the surface of the ant's head
- Bugscope Team this is a katydid, in profile
- Teacher What is the part in back of its head that has circles?
Bugscope Team that is the carbon tape that we stick the insects onto
- Bugscope Team it helps ground the charge coming from the electron beam
- Teacher lol
- 10:44am
- Bugscope Team ooh these are the spider's fangs crossed in the center of the screen
- Bugscope Team when the spider bites its prey, it pulls the prey toward it, and those ridges help hold onto what it is biting
- Teacher very cool! What are the 3 sharp looking parts behind the fangs
Bugscope Team those are what help retain the prey and keep it from getting away.
- Bugscope Team spiders use their fangs to inject venom into their prey. the venom dissolves the inner organs of the prey, and the spider can then suck them up like a milkshake
- Teacher What is the piece that is below the left fang?
Bugscope Team sometimes spiders will puke on themselves when they die, and that could be a dried piece of it. gross, I know
- Teacher Do the fangs open and close?
Bugscope Team yes! the spider can extend its fangs to bite, and it can retract them as well
- Bugscope Team the fangs are at the ends of those two large lobes called chelicerae, or chelicers, and those are is what move outward and backa
- 10:50am
- Teacher can we see the spider eyes?
Bugscope Team here you can see 2 round simple eyes on the top of the spider head
- Bugscope Team spiders typically have 8 of them. We just can't see them all right now
- Teacher What are all those hairs for?
Bugscope Team most hairs you see on insects are for the sense of touch so they can feel what is going on around them.
- Bugscope Team spiders have especially sensitive hairs that help them detect vibrations
- Teacher Do all spiders have simple eyes?
Bugscope Team yes, which is one of the reasons why they are different from insects
- Teacher how do tarantulas throw their hairs
Bugscope Team I am not sure if they throw them or if they just release them into the air. It is only certain hairs -- the 'urticating hairs' -- that they release
- Teacher gross!
- 10:56am
- Bugscope Team you know we were thinking the same thing
- Teacher where does the dissolving liquid come out of?
Bugscope Team right about where we are looking now -- it is saliva, and it comes out of this area, for example those ridges
- Bugscope Team hopefully we didnt gross you out too much!
- Teacher We are going to have snack now. Thank you for answering our questions about bugs?
Bugscope Team yeah this was making me hungry too!
- Bugscope Team Lois are we done for today?
- Teacher The next group should be here soon.
- Teacher ok - I am showing the claw to the next teacher. Looks scary!
- 11:01am
- Bugscope Team this is one of the claws of an earwig, one of those critters with a pincer tail
- Teacher Good morning! Mr. Riley here with the 9-12 year olds
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Teacher Student question: What are the bumpy parts on the eye?
Bugscope Team those are the individual facets of the compound eye. They each see an image
- 11:07am
- Teacher What are the little white dots we are seeing?
Bugscope Team I think the little white dots are salts that have dried onto the wasp's face. Some of the larger white things we see are setae (sensory hairs) as well.
- Bugscope Team we can go up in magnification to check...
- Teacher Thanks! That'd be great!
- Bugscope Team now we can see that the sensory setae appear to be white dots at lower mag but are long and narrow at higher mag
- Bugscope Team and we can see that the cuticle -- the shell or exoskeleton material the head is made of -- has patchy areas in it too
- Teacher Yes, those colors are super cool.
- Teacher Cool! How many hairs do wasps usually have?
Bugscope Team they have hundreds to thousands of hairs; some are mechano- (touch) sensory, some are chemo- (smell or scent) sensory, and some are thermo- (hot/cold) sensory
- 11:13am
- Bugscope Team feel free to drive to another area or click on a preset (to the left)
- Teacher Wow! Thanks! We didn't know that they sensed hot and cold.
- Bugscope Team here you can see into the fly's mouth
- Bugscope Team insects have to do many of the same things we do, but they may have to do them a different way
- Teacher Wow. There's a lot there. :)
- Bugscope Team very gross looking
- Bugscope Team for example, we have skin with nerve endings in it, but insects have a hardened shell
- Bugscope Team the insect shell is like a coat of armor would be to us, and the hairs that stick through the armor help the insects sense their environment
- Teacher It looks like there are hairs in the mouth. Why are they there?
Bugscope Team they don't have sensitive skin like we do, so the hairs help them feel things mostly. These are probably to help the fly know when the tongue is touching something else
- Bugscope Team insects often do not have ears, so they may use some of the mechanosensory hairs to detect vibration, which is what noise is
- Bugscope Team some of the hairs around the mouth are chemosensory as well and help the fly taste what it might want to sponge up with its mouth
- 11:18am
- Teacher That's really radical. Is what we are looking at a proper tongue inside the mouth, or is it an external appendage?
Bugscope Team I think it would be considered an external appendage, kind of like a muscular sponge that oozes digestive juices onto its prospective food and then sponges up the dissolved liquid
- Bugscope Team some flies have sponging mouthparts like this, but some other flies have piercing or slashing mouthparts. like horseflies or deerflies.
- Bugscope Team this is one of the first times we have see into the 'gullet' of the fly. it is usually obscured, and it is possible part of what covers that opening it is broken away
- Bugscope Team spiders do not chew their prey -- they inject venom into it, the venom dissolves the inner organs, and they suck up what is dissolved
- Bugscope Team you can see the fangs in the very center of where we are looking
- 11:23am
- Teacher What are the "flaky thingees" :) below the mouth?
Bugscope Team that is some dried fluid that is flaking away, as you noted
- Bugscope Team the great big things the fangs are attached to are the chelicerae, and they can move outward as well as spread forward so that the spider can bite and pierce its prey with the fangs
- Bugscope Team the ridges on either side of the fangs help the spider hold its prey as it bites]\
- Teacher The kids would like to see a closer look at the fangs. Could we zoom in?
- Bugscope Team the poison pores are near the end of the fangs, which we can't really see right now
- Bugscope Team you can see that they are hardened and smooth
- Teacher What are those little stubs above the fangs? They can't be teeth...
Bugscope Team those with the aid of the fangs will help hold it's food
- Bugscope Team its*
- Bugscope Team you can see, near the tip of the right fang, something that looks like a leaf. that is an insect scale, like from a moth or butterfly
- 11:29am
- Bugscope Team Hello 20901!
- Bugscope Team this is the tip of one of the legs of the backswimmer
- Teacher Haha. 20901? So what exactly is a back swimmer?
- Bugscope Team it is a beetle that can swim under the water, swim on its back on the surface of the water, and also, apparently, fly
- Bugscope Team they eat tadpoles, other insects, and even small fish
- 11:34am
- Bugscope Team they are also true bugs, which means they have piercing/sucking mouthparts -- they are thus related to stinkbugs, for example
- Teacher Very cool. 1) What are the claws used for and 2) what is the part in the background? Kind of looks like a a leaf with hairs on it.
Bugscope Team the claws are mostly to hold onto things like food. The long claws here suggest that they also aid in swimming/skimming the water. The thing in the background is part of another leg. Along the legs there are long, bristle-like hairs that help give the insect enough surface area to stay on top of the water
- Teacher Well thank you so much for this. It has been fascinating! We have to go have a snack. Have a great morning, and thanks again!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team thanks for using bugscope with us this morning!
- Bugscope Team See you next year!
- Teacher Our pleasure. Take care!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-012
- Bugscope Team wish we could have seen some of the insects from your area. The insects from Illinois get a little boring for us
- Bugscope Team below is the link to your member page
- Bugscope Team Bye! and Thank You again!
- Teacher O, wonderful! Thanks so much. Perhaps we can send you some TX insects next time.
- Bugscope Team that would be great!
