Connected on 2011-06-10 10:00:00 from Greene, Missouri, United States
- 9:06am
- Bugscope Team sample is pumping down...
- Bugscope Team almost there
- Bugscope Team then we'll start to make presets for today's session with the Discovery Center of Springfield
- 9:13am
- Bugscope Team now making presets...
- 9:19am
- 9:24am
- 9:30am
- 9:35am
- 9:42am
- 9:47am
- Bugscope Team good morning, Science77!
- Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Teacher Hello, good morning!
- Bugscope Team I am finishing up the presets for your session.
- Teacher ok, we are ready to go!
- Bugscope Team you should be able to start driving now
- Bugscope Team I will be back in a sec
- Teacher ok
- 9:53am
- Bugscope Team alright I am back
- Bugscope Team please let me know when you have questions, and/or if you have any trouble driving
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a male mosquito
- Bugscope Team and we are looking at individual facets -- ommatidia -- of the compound eye
- Bugscope Team the ommatidia are a little dirty, I'm sorry
- Bugscope Team which holds the base of the antenna
- Bugscope Team there is a lot of juju on the surfaces of the ommatidia
- Bugscope Team they are a little more than 20 microns -- micrometers -- in diameter. about 10 bacilli bacteria in diameter
- Bugscope Team a micrometer is a one thousandth of a millimeter, or a millionth of a meter
- 9:59am
- Teacher ok! very cool!
- Bugscope Team you can see that the pollen grains moved a bit since we made the preset
- Bugscope Team I clicked on the screen to center it
- Bugscope Team this is part of the ambush bug's 'retention plan'
- Bugscope Team the quite powerful forearms close on prey to hold it tight while the ambush bug pierces it with its proboscis
- Teacher ok, one of my students asked how long it takes to prepare a sample for the SEM?
Bugscope Team because most of these insects are air-dried it is very simple to mount them on a stub with doublestick carbon and silver paint, then sputtercoat them with gold-palladium; maybe a half hour to make a whole stub
- 10:04am
- Bugscope Team because the caddisfly larva lives underwater, it gets diatoms and other tiny aquatic flora/fauna attached to it
- Bugscope Team this is one of the diatoms -- or at least the silica shell of one
- Bugscope Team the claw!
- Bugscope Team silverfish are covered with scales like moths, butterflies, and mosquitoes, as well as very few other insects
- 10:10am
- Bugscope Team if a butterfly or moth or silverfish happens into a spiderweb, it has a chance to escape by leaving the scales and slipping its body out
- Teacher another question...How many insect specimens did you prepare today and how long did it take to prepare all of them?
- 10:15am
- Bugscope Team but that does not include critical point drying of some insects well in advance of the session. that can take about 40 minutes.
- Teacher ok
- Bugscope Team if we get insects in ethanol we can critical point dry them and get better preservation of soft parts like mosquito eyes
- Bugscope Team I am sorry we have no female mosquitoes today. when you critical point dry them their mouthparts fly apart, and you can often see the stylets, of which there are four, very sharp.
- Teacher how many compound eyes, or ommotidia does a mosquito or thrip have?
Bugscope Team they have a few hundred ommatidia, probably. a large wasp can have 5000 per compound eye, although I have never done the counting.
- 10:20am
- Bugscope Team many flying insects also have ocelli -- three simple eyes -- on the top of the head. you may be able to see them on one of the houseflies.
- Bugscope Team let me know if the 'scope is not driving correctly
- Bugscope Team now you can see at least one ocellus, to the top
- Bugscope Team the antennae are pretty much in the middle, with the pad portion -- I forget what it's called -- and the aristate, or branched, portion
- 10:25am
- Bugscope Team generally, female flies have their eyes fairly far apart, whereas those of the males are often close together
- Bugscope Team caddisflies, as larvae, are good indicators of water quality in a stream
- Bugscope Team the longer smooth rounded things are the gills
- Bugscope Team oops don't see any now
- Bugscope Team this is the head
- Bugscope Team these guys are predators in the water
- Bugscope Team so among these fine hairs/bristles/setae we find other aquatic organisms
- Bugscope Team and dirt/debris
- Bugscope Team there are larger round things like sea squirts or more likely vorticella in some places
- 10:32am
- Bugscope Team be sure and go through any presets that might be interesting to you so they go into your database
- Teacher i did mail in some insects but put them on 2 day express. They should have made it there by now. But Scott did leave me a voice mail saying the person that deals with them may be on vacation. So i was wondering if you guys could use them for my next session in july?
Bugscope Team yeah the insects were in my mailbox this morning; it has to do with the lackadaisical delivery on this end
- Bugscope Team we can use them in July, yes
- Bugscope Team these are very small ants that were invading my kitchen; I caught them a few at a time and froze them
- Bugscope Team then I put them in ethanol and Cate critical point dried them
- Bugscope Team you can see the mandibles that open and close like a gate
- Teacher ok, great. yeah i wasn't sure if we had mailed them in time or not.
- Bugscope Team and you can see the one compound eye quite clearly, plus the antennae
- Bugscope Team here you can count the ommatidia. some ant species do not bother to have eyes at all. but the antennae are very important
- Bugscope Team even this 'simple' compound eye has about 50 ommatidia
- 10:39am
- Teacher do all insects with eyes have compounds eyes?
Bugscope Team I am not sure -- it would be the adults, because earlier stages can have simple eyes, like caterpillars have stemmata
- Bugscope Team huh my chat window just wigged out
- Bugscope Team going to another computer
- Teacher oh, ok
- Bugscope Team yeah my reply got hung up and messed up that window
- Bugscope Team I don't think all adult insects have compound eyes; I know that all larval insects do not.
- Bugscope Team for example, caterpillars have, often, five stemmata on each side.
- Bugscope Team five bump-like simple eyes on each side
- Teacher ok.
- Bugscope Team silverfish often look confused, like they just woke up
- 10:44am
- Bugscope Team this is the ambush bug -- a 'true bug'
- Bugscope Team it was orangey-yellow
- Bugscope Team with a scanning electron microscope the images come in as signal; there is no color
- Bugscope Team that is of course ignoring that we coat the samples with gold-palladium, so they look silver
- Bugscope Team here you can see that the compound eye has thousands of ommatidia
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes like this you would have very good peripheral vision, and you would have the ability to register movement or motion in your visual field very quickly. but it could be hard to get dates, and also difficult to buy sunglasses
- 10:49am
- Bugscope Team the ambush bug sits on plants (note that it had pollen on it) and waits for insects to land. it then pounces on them, grasping it with those powerful spikey forelimbs. and it pierces them with its proboscis, sucking out all of the juice inside
- Bugscope Team so now we are looking at the side of the front of the head, and in the background is the right eye
- Bugscope Team ladybug head, with compound eye
- Bugscope Team the bar across the front of the eye is the antenna shaft
- 10:54am
- Bugscope Team the reason I made a preset of only the eye is because the rest of the body doesn't look so good; it's kind of beat up
- Bugscope Team and even here we see that there is some kind of film or goo on part of the head
- Bugscope Team it's probably hemolymph
- Bugscope Team this is a backswimmer; another aquatic insect
- Bugscope Team it is also a true bug
- Teacher cool. we recently visited a stream and collected water samples and looked for microrganisms and invertebrates under the microscopes.
- Bugscope Team sweet
- Bugscope Team so did you see some of these guys?
- Teacher we found some water stryders and insect nymphs, but no backswimmers.
- 10:59am
- Bugscope Team these guys do the backstroke
- Teacher Alright, well we've got to head back to class now. Thank you so much for this opportunity! we really enjoyed it! See you guys in July!
- Bugscope Team Thank You! See you soon!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-035
- Bugscope Team today's session below
- Bugscope Team bye!
