Connected on 2011-09-09 11:00:00 from Maricopa, Arizona, United States
- 10:07am
- Bugscope Team you can see the sample in the chamber now, in the CCD view
- Bugscope Team it is pumping down -- we are waiting for it to reach the right vacuum level
- Bugscope Team then we'll start setup for today's session
- 10:16am
- 10:21am
- 10:27am
- 10:33am
- 10:38am
- Bugscope Team good morning, Mrs Hill!
- Bugscope Team we are finishing presets, almost done
- Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- 10:45am
- Teacher Good Morning!
- 10:50am
- Bugscope Team morning Mrs. Hill
- Teacher Hi there, are we supposed to be locating the CCD view now? We aren't sure about how to do that.
- Bugscope Team we have to put it into CCD mode manually. Give us a few minutes and we can do that. Scot went upstairs really quick to grab some food
- Teacher He can eat after working with bugs?!
- Bugscope Team haha yeah. But only if they aren't really juicy!
- Bugscope Team the CCD detector needs to be replaced...
- Bugscope Team So here is the CCD and it is a little dim because the camera is dying slowly. But near the middle is the sample with all the critters on it
- Teacher wow.
- Bugscope Team yeah we are used to eating around bugs now
- 10:56am
- Bugscope Team or pretty much
- Bugscope Team I still get grossed out by big juicy ones, as Cate said
- Teacher ugh.
- Bugscope Team this is cool
- Bugscope Team we take advantage of the gross-out factor in Bugscope
- Teacher I have heard a couple of "fear factor" comments from my class. :)
- Teacher I could totalllllly handle lady bugs!
- Bugscope Team here you can see the compound eyes, which are a bit shrunken compared to when the fly was alive
- Bugscope Team in the center of the head are the antennae, which have that pad part I forget what it's called, and the branch part, called the aristate antenna
- Teacher interesting!
- 11:01am
- Bugscope Team tons of setae -- hairs, bristles
- Teacher What are the spiney hair things around the head and on the back??
Bugscope Team those are similar to cat whiskers. They help the fly feel what is around it
- Bugscope Team the fly can sense touch, and wind, with those mechanosensory setae
- Bugscope Team it also has setae that allow it to smell or taste the air, and setae that sense hot/cold
- Bugscope Team some setae -- the tenent setae -- are the sticky hairs that help the fly cling to surfaces, like glass, or like the ceiling
- Teacher It is amazing how complicated a simple fly is. :) Where is its mouth?
Bugscope Team the mouth is south, just a bit
- Bugscope Team we can see the extension of it at the bottom of the area we are looking at now
- Bugscope Team now we are starting to get kind of gross
- Teacher much groaning happening here. :P
- Bugscope Team usually the proboscis is swollen with liquid, not as shrunken as it is now
- Bugscope Team this fly has sponging mouthparts
- 11:06am
- Bugscope Team it spits up on its food to digest it a bit, and then sucks or sponges it all up
- Bugscope Team you would really cause a sensation in the cafeteria if you ate like that
- Bugscope Team certainly no one would want to sit with you
- Teacher Holy Cow!
- Teacher Does it suck it like a hose or scoop like a cat tongue?
Bugscope Team maybe Cate knows better than I do, but I think it works like a sponge
- Bugscope Team i don't think it sucks it. It would have a different mouth part
- Bugscope Team probably more like a lapping I guess
- Bugscope Team the thing that looks like a leaf, kind of, is a scale from another insect like a butterfly or moth
- Bugscope Team actually here it looks like it has been fraternizing with a leafhopper
- Bugscope Team because we see those tiny things like soccerballs called brochosomes that come only from leafhoppers
- Teacher Is that pollen?
Bugscope Team these are brochosomes which only leafhoppers can make. They are natural nanoparticles
- Teacher Wow. We are in awe.
- Bugscope Team yes as Cate says when we see brochosomes like this we are imaging on the nanoscale
- 11:11am
- Bugscope Team they are usually a few hundred nanometers in diameter
- Bugscope Team beautiful tiny particles
- Teacher We always think of flies as really dirty. Do they carry germs as well as leafhopper bits?
Bugscope Team we don't often see bacteria on insects, even flies. So I don't think they are as germy as people say, but I could be wrong
- Bugscope Team ticks usually have bacteria on them though
- Bugscope Team it is pretty dirty, though, isn't it? if bacteria were hanging out here we would see them
- Teacher One of my students would like to know if that debris hurts the fly's eyes.
Bugscope Team no they probably don't even realize it's there. They also can't blink it away, but they do rub their forearms on their eyes to help clean them. You've probably seen that action when they land
- 11:16am
- Bugscope Team you can click to get the 'scope to drive to other presets if you would like
- Bugscope Team it's me (Scot) playing with the 'scope while we're talking
- Bugscope Team yay!
- Bugscope Team isn't this cool?
- Teacher Is he holding something in his mouth?
Bugscope Team it's a little stick
- Bugscope Team see her wraparound eyes?
- Bugscope Team they both have a lot of ommatidia that you wouldn't want to have to count!
- 11:21am
- Teacher How are the wasps eyes similar to a fly's eyes?
Bugscope Team they are very similar. female fly eyes are often far apart whereas those of males are often close together and almost touching, but with wasps, I believe most of the ones we see are females, and of course they're not flies but wasps.
- Bugscope Team wasps and flies both have the two big compound eyes (we see one of now) as well as three ocelli -- or simple eyes -- on the back of the head
- Bugscope Team the bump we see now at the back of the head is an ocellus
- Bugscope Team and there are two more we cannot see now
- Bugscope Team the ocelli are light-sensitive but may not collect images; they help the fly or wasp or bee maintain its orientation with respect to the sun
- Teacher Is antenna jointed? Is it retractable?
Bugscope Team they are jointed, like an elbow
- 11:26am
- Teacher This ant is upside down right?
Bugscope Team yes it is!
- Bugscope Team these ants are so tiny I'm just glad I didn't squish it trying to put it on the stub
- Bugscope Team ants often look like they have another insect in their mouth. it's because we see those long palps that look like legs, which in a way they are
- Bugscope Team this is one of the scorpion's tiny claws
- Teacher The mouth area on the ant looked really complicated.
Bugscope Team yes it is -- it is really busy with four palps sticking out of it
- Bugscope Team the palps are mouthparts that help the ant manipulate food and also taste it
- Teacher We thinks this looks like human skin.
- Bugscope Team it looks like skin but it is hardened, kind of like your fingernails
- Bugscope Team our skin would look similar, with all the flakiness to it
- Bugscope Team insects and comparable arthropods like scorpions have an exoskeleton, kind of a shell around them, kind of like armor
- 11:32am
- Bugscope Team because they have a shell around them, and it is hardened, they need to have those tiny setae stick through that shell so they can sense the environment around them
- Bugscope Team the setae, like the little bristle-like ones we see now, reach inside the cuticle (what the shell is sometimes called) and connect with nerve endings within
- Bugscope Team these setae are fluted, like Roman columns
- Bugscope Team the fluting makes they strong and more rigid
- Bugscope Team see the micron bar at the lower left of the screen?
- Bugscope Team it reads 2 microns, or micrometers
- Bugscope Team a normal rod-shaped bacterium is about 2 microns (micrometers) long
- Teacher Incredible.
- Bugscope Team a micrometer is a thousandth of a millimeter and a millionth of a meter
- 11:37am
- Bugscope Team when we were looking at the brochosomes, we are on the nano scale, as we had said, and they are perhaps 350 billionths of a meter in diameter
- Bugscope Team 350 nanometers
- Teacher Or another dead friendly centipede?
- Teacher Is this our friendly centipede?
Bugscope Team yes but it was very long so I had to cut it in half
- Bugscope Team looks kind of like Bugs Bunny
- Bugscope Team it seems to have puked on itself when it died because there is some dried goop covering its moutparts
- Teacher lovely.
- Bugscope Team the fangs are right in front of us but as Cate said they are covered in goop
- Bugscope Team haha
- Bugscope Team but we are sorry not to have a better view for you
- Teacher This is really cool none the less. You can't stop centipede vomit.
- Bugscope Team centipedes are kind of like spiders in that they often inject venom into their prey. the venom dissolves the inside of the prey, and the centipede sucks it all back up like a milkshake, like a spider does
- Bugscope Team talk about a busy mouth, here we are
- Teacher You aren't kidding!
- Bugscope Team you can see that the scorpion has little forked fangs
- Bugscope Team that is what those sharp things are -- the fangs
- 11:43am
- Bugscope Team some of the setae we see here are likely chemosensory, so the scorpion can taste its food
- Bugscope Team the scorpion may hold its prey with its fangs and then sting with its tail
- Teacher haha--either one...both are abundant here.
- Teacher We think this earwig looks like a cactus...you don't have them there do you?
Bugscope Team cacti or earwigs?
Bugscope Team In have prickly pear cactus in the front yard, but they don't like the wintertime much
- Bugscope Team Oops I meant to say "I have..."
- Bugscope Team we don't naturally have cacti, just what people buy, but we do have a lot of earwigs.
- Bugscope Team we don't have large cacti here
- Teacher :)
- 11:48am
- Bugscope Team earwigs often have mites living on them, as we saw
- Bugscope Team stinger!
- Bugscope Team this is kind of blunt, which means it hurts more when it punches into your skin
- Teacher Doesn't look so sharp.
- Bugscope Team and also, it does not have hooklike edges that would make it stick into your skin. meaning that it can sting repeatedly
- Teacher Looks like marble or blood vessels. Ouch with the repeated stinging.
- Bugscope Team we think what we are seeing here is a lot of juju like what the centipede puked up
- Teacher oh my.
- Bugscope Team it's dried on venom, perhaps, that leaked down the stinger
- Bugscope Team it forms a film
- Bugscope Team wasp venom isn't as potent as bee venom, but because they can sting multiple times it evens out in the end
- Bugscope Team cercopods!
- Teacher We don't know what this is.
- 11:53am
- Bugscope Team this is the pincer tail
- Bugscope Team of the earwig
- Bugscope Team the cercopods of a male earwig are more bowed
- Teacher Oh! Those we know...we just don't know the fancy bug language. :)
- Bugscope Team earwigs are known for caring for their young
- Teacher that is sweet.
- Teacher Do you know what this is?
- Bugscope Team it could be a scale that is very dirty
- Bugscope Team you found something we do not recognize
- Bugscope Team cerco or cerca means in Latin to fence or to close in on something, and pod means foot
- Teacher Holy crow. This is cool.
- Bugscope Team so a cercopod could be a foot-like appendage that pinches. at least in this case it seems to work...
- Teacher We are kind of scientists like that. :D
Bugscope Team totally cool
- 11:59am
- Bugscope Team we like it when Bugscope participants find things we had not already seen
- Bugscope Team this is something we'd seen, but we don't know what these pits do
- Bugscope Team we think, maybe, that they are chemosensory pits
- Bugscope Team wow good job focussing!
- Bugscope Team mosquito ommatidia
- Bugscope Team ommatidia are what the individual facets of the compound eye are called
- Teacher We feel like we could do a pretty good job picking out ommatidia in a line up now.
- Bugscope Team these are shriveled, at bit, from when the mosquito was alive
- Bugscope Team they would normally be a lot rounder than this, but they shrunk a little after they died
- 12:04pm
- Teacher They look surprisingly soft.
- Bugscope Team oh look! the focus got better!
- Bugscope Team this is hard to focus remotely
- Teacher Amaaaaaaaaazing.
- Bugscope Team when we use the microscope like this, for Bugscope, we have a slight disadvantage in looking at things at high magnification
- Bugscope Team but it looks pretty good at more than 40,000x!
- Teacher We have a new appreciation for bugs. :)
- Bugscope Team be sure to check out the mosquito's mouthparts
- Bugscope Team but are still really gross right?
- Bugscope Team you now know that they are a lot hairier than they seem
- Teacher they will always be gross...we will just appreciate them more.
Bugscope Team this allows you to see just how gross they are
- Teacher ugh.
- Bugscope Team there we go
- Bugscope Team stingers sometimes look like this and not the like the blunt one you saw
- 12:09pm
- Bugscope Team two of the stylets that cut into your skin so the mosquito can drink your blood and then lay eggs
- Bugscope Team female mosquitoes are the ones that bite, and thye need blood in order to get enough protein to successfully lay their eggs
- Bugscope Team so they are ravenous just because they really really want to produce baby mosquitoes.
- Teacher delightful. What is the silly string looking stuff around the stylets?
Bugscope Team that is part of the sheath that the fascicle -- the bundle of stylets and the siphon tube -- is protected with
- Bugscope Team it might have little tastebud hairs on it
- Bugscope Team some of those setae may be chemosensory -- as Cate just said
- Teacher To better enjoy our blood.
- Bugscope Team some people are clearly more tasty than others
- 12:14pm
- Teacher We have really enjoyed this! Thank you so very much for the time and energy you put into making this a wonderful experience for our class!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team we are glad you all had a good time and we hope to see you again
- Teacher We will be doing this again. You guys are the best!!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-071
- Bugscope Team yay!
- Bugscope Team be sure to apply soon --- we are getting so busy we are booked into next year
- Bugscope Team below I had copied a link to your member page
- Teacher Thank you!
- Bugscope Team Save us some more scorpions and centipedes!
