Connected on 2011-08-31 10:15:00 from Sioux, Iowa, United States
- 9:01am
- Bugscope Team just opened the microscope software, finishing the sample prep, and soon we will be putting today's stub into the 'scope
- 9:31am
- Bugscope Team now we're starting to make presets
- Bugscope Team Good morning!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team this is Scott
- Bugscope Team Cate is on the SEM right now, so she is SEM
- Bugscope Team this will give you a preview of the whole sample
- 9:37am
- Bugscope Team Mrs Krebs be sure to let us know if you have any questions now.
- 9:42am
- 9:47am
- 9:55am
- 10:04am
- Bugscope Team we are ready to roll!
- Bugscope Team Mrs Krebs you have control and are welcome to drive around, try presets, etc.
- 10:09am
- 10:14am
- 10:30am
- Bugscope Team Hello! Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team let us know when you have questions!
- 10:35am
- Bugscope Team this is the head of the grasshopper you sent. it is so large we cannot go to a low enough magnification, with this microscope, to see the whole head
- Bugscope Team you can see that the compound eye, to the left of center, has tiny facets in it
- Bugscope Team whoever is controlling the microscope on your end can bring the magnification up, change contrast/brightness, and also 'drive' a bit by clicking on the image to center that clicked area
- Bugscope Team presently Krebsclass Student has control of the microscope
- Bugscope Team we had stored a preset image, but the sample shifted a bit since we did that
- Bugscope Team just shows that these images are 'live'
- Bugscope Team now you can see a few of the thousands of ommatidia that make up one compound eye
- 10:41am
- Bugscope Team ommatidia are usually hexagonal in shape. This allows for the ommatidia to better fit the curvature of the head
- Bugscope Team these are individual scales on the Monarch wing, now
- Bugscope Team Here are some scale zoomed in close. You can see the structures that give the scale color. Like if you tilted something and it happened to change color, that is how these work
- Bugscope Team they are what make the wing feel so smooth when you touch it, and they come off easily. to us in the macro world they appear to be fine powder
- Bugscope Team it is difficult, sometimes, to get good images of wing scales, especially, because they are not conductive and are hard to stabilize when the electron beam hits them
- Bugscope Team we're looking, right now, at the ridges that run along the long axis of the scale
- Bugscope Team the smaller latticework is where we will sometimes find pigment granules
- 10:46am
- Bugscope Team as Cate had mentioned, the shape and spacing of the structures we're looking at now refract light in different colors depending on the angle at which you see them
- Bugscope Team the wing scales produce both structural colors and colors derived from pigment
- Bugscope Team this is almost 17,000x
- Bugscope Team a light microscope maxes out at about 1500x
- Bugscope Team feel free to click on other presets, of course, or take the magnification down, etc.
- Bugscope Team this is the right eye of the cicada
- Bugscope Team facing us
- 10:51am
- Bugscope Team cicadas and grasshoppers are pretty big, but we made do with their body parts :)
- Bugscope Team so only the head was kept of the cicada
- Bugscope Team cicadas are in the order if insects called Hemiptera, and one of the features of hemipterans is their piercing/sucking mouthparts
- Bugscope Team cicadas make noise by using tymbals on their abdomens
- Guest Test
- Bugscope Team what is centered in the image right now is called the 'pulvillus'
- Bugscope Team Hi Student 2!
- Bugscope Team That worked!
- Bugscope Team at close range they can be as loud as 120 dB, which is near the pain threshold of the human ear.
- Guest Hi!
- Bugscope Team the pulvillus has lots of tiny hairs on it called 'tenent setae.'
- 10:56am
- Bugscope Team we can see some of those setae now; they are what allows the fly to climb walls and glass and walk on the ceiling
- Bugscope Team you can also see the actual claws now
- Bugscope Team they open and close to grasp things
- Bugscope Team be sure to ask us questions if you'd like
- Bugscope Team you've been doing a great job driving
- Bugscope Team these are itty bitty claws
- Student how long are the claws?
Bugscope Team we can see by comparing their length with the scalebar that they are about 200 microns (micrometers) long -- about a fifth of a millimeter
- Bugscope Team a millimeter is a thousandth of a meter, and a micron, or micrometer, is a thousandth of a millimeter -- or a millionth of a meter
- Bugscope Team now we're looking at the underside of the head of the black beetle, and we see its mouthparts
- Guest Where are the eyes at?
Bugscope Team the eyes are at the very sides of the head
- Bugscope Team we can't see them right now
- 11:01am
- Bugscope Team but if you went left or right on the screen you should be able to see some eyes
- Bugscope Team I just saw your email question about the inconsistencies in the scales -- yes those could represent damage to the wing. Moths, butterflies, mosquitoes, silverfish, and few other insects have scales, which are very useful if the insect gets caught in a spiderweb, for example: it can shed some scales and slip out
- Student how big is the mouth?
Bugscope Team the mouth opening is pretty small, and it is hard to actually give you a number
- Bugscope Team it doesn't hurt to lose scales. They are kind of like a defense mechanism
- Guest How long can the tongue get once it is unrolled?
Bugscope Team it can easily be a centimeter long
- 11:07am
- Bugscope Team sometimes a butterfly or moth will have to reach far into a flower to get to the nectar
- Bugscope Team because we are using electrons to image these specimens, we see only in grayscale, in levels of black and white
- Guest What is the hairlike stubstance near the mouth?
Bugscope Team those are more scales. They just look a little differently
- Bugscope Team now we can see that there are thousands of facets (ommatidia) on each compound eye
- Bugscope Team because the eyes of butterflies and moths often charge up with electrons, we cannot get a clear image of this eye, presently
- 11:13am
- Bugscope Team we are beaming electrons at the sample, in a vacuum chamber, and the images we see come from the electrons (called secondary electrons) that bounce out of the surface of the sample
- Bugscope Team what's cool about the eye, which we can't see right now, is there are little cones all over each ommatidia
- Bugscope Team beetle claws!
- Bugscope Team it is unlikely that this beetle can climb well, very unlikely that it can cling to your ceiling like a fly
- Teacher Why can't it climb well?
Bugscope Team some insects have little pads of hair, called a pulvillus, which located right next to the claw. Here, the beetle doesn't have any. The pads of hair are full of special hairs called tenent setae, which allow the insect to climb vertical surfaces. They act like suction cups or velcro. Since there is no pulvillus here, then he/she can't climb very well
- 11:19am
- Teacher We thought it was really cool that the compound eye parts are each the width of a human hair.
Bugscope Team yeah isn't that cool! they are so small!
- Bugscope Team ladybugs have those pads Cate mentioned a little further up on the leg/arm, and there may be more than one pad (pulvillus) per limb
- Student how wide are the claws
Bugscope Team it looks like they are one third to one fourth of a millimeter across when they are opened. that is 250 to 300-some micrometers across\
- Bugscope Team this is the big eeeeuw!
- 11:24am
- Bugscope Team the mouthparts of the housefly
- Bugscope Team sponging mouthparts
- Bugscope Team they are a bit dry, of course, not as slimy as they are when the fly is alive
- Bugscope Team some flies have these sponging mouthparts; they spit up on their food to dissolve it and then sponge up the results
- Bugscope Team horseflies, however, have slashing/cutting mouthparts
- Bugscope Team kind of like a muscular sponge, here, with sensory setae/spines
- Student is the hair like substance setae
Bugscope Team not these no. These are more for helping the insect to feel what is around it. They can't feel things the same way we do
- 11:30am
- Bugscope Team some of the setae have a chemosensory function -- the fly can use them to taste its food
- Guest are the tiny ones the same thing
Bugscope Team it is hard to tell; someone has likely studied that, but we are not sure. we often see structures we cannot identify
- Bugscope Team the very tiny ones may help slimy fluid stick to the surface of the sponging mouthparts by providing more surface area -- more roughness
- Bugscope Team when setae have little sockets like the larger ones we see now, they are generally attached to nerves beneath the cuticle, which is what the exoskeleton is called
- Bugscope Team the microsetae, however, certainly do not connect to nerves
- 11:35am
- Bugscope Team here we can see how 'weathered' the surface of the brown beetle's leg is
- Bugscope Team and this is a clump of pollen -- you can see the tiny spikes
- Guest is that pollen
Bugscope Team yes it is!
Bugscope Team this is a clump of pollen grains
- Teacher OK, now we really have to go! Thank you so much for this session. We will send you a link to our blog post!
- Bugscope Team Cool! Thank You!
- Bugscope Team thanks and we are glad you could do bugscope with us today!
- Bugscope Team Great to get to connect with you today!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-081
- Bugscope Team below is your member page
- Teacher THANKS, Everyone!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-081
- 11:40am
- Teacher There it is! Great, and we will have access to the transcript here, right? We'll be able to go back and look more closely at what you shared.
- Bugscope Team yes the chat and images are there
- Bugscope Team over and out! Thank You!
