Connected on 2012-05-01 16:00:00 from Alameda, California, United States
- 3:11pm
- Bugscope Team we are almost there...
- Bugscope Team waiting for the vacuum
- 3:17pm
- 3:23pm
- 3:28pm
- 3:34pm
- Bugscope Team cool spider
- Bugscope Team yeah good job
- Bugscope Team this stuff I don't know, though; the 'lace things'
- Bugscope Team yes dante's inferno
- 3:40pm
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team we're still collecting presets for your session
- Bugscope Team ladybugs are not so cute when they're young
- 3:45pm
- 3:51pm
- Bugscope Team we are ready to roll
- 3:58pm
- Bugscope Team you turned around and it appeared? (honeybees)
- Bugscope Team hi!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Student Hello!
Bugscope Team you have control of the 'scope whenever you wish
- Bugscope Team please let us know if you have any trouble and when you have questions about anything
- Bugscope Team this, presently, is the ball and socket joint on the head of a wasp
- Bugscope Team Teach you can select from any of the presets on the lefthand screen, by clicking on one.
- Bugscope Team You can also drive the 'scope directly: change mag, brightness, contrast, focus
- Bugscope Team and you can click on the image itself to center a feature
- Bugscope Team all of the images and the chat are saved to your member page
- Bugscope Team spider!
- Bugscope Team this is the underside of the spider's jaws
- Bugscope Team this is a ladybug with a renegade aphid stuck to it
- 4:04pm
- Bugscope Team back to the spider, which may be a wolf spider, smaller and muscular
- Bugscope Team this is a big spider that one of our lab techs told me are sometimes kept as pets! (they aren't tarantula big)
- Bugscope Team you can see one of the poison ducts
- Student Why can't I click on an image?
Bugscope Team um it looks like it's working, from here -- you just clicked on the pore, and it's on the screen; is it not working there?
- Bugscope Team I should say Is it working for you now?
- Bugscope Team now you're on the fruitfly claw
- Student I can't see it in a big view.
- Bugscope Team if it's not working there you may have some web blocking software. Can you see it by refreshing your browser?
- Bugscope Team when you go to the center screen, what do you see now?
- Bugscope Team we see the fruitfly claw
- 4:09pm
- Bugscope Team these are all live images acquired from the microscope.
- Student great I see it now.
Bugscope Team sweet
- Bugscope Team now we are magnified in on the claw
- Student How do I move to a different picture? I would like to see the picture of the spider.
Bugscope Team you are actually driving a scanning electron microscope from your classroom, so you are seeing live images, as Cate said
- Bugscope Team so if you go to the lefthand screen and click on the spider chelicers/fangs, the 'scope will drive to that place and the image will show up on the central screen
- Bugscope Team the little groups of tendrils are tenant setae, which are special hairs on the claw that help the fly walk on walls
- Student What are those things on the claw of the fruitfly?
Bugscope Team we see some bristles, or setae, that help it sense when it is grasping something, and the smaller flower-like setae to the left are tenent setae, which help the fruitfly cling to surfaces
- Bugscope Team some of the fine stuff we see is dirt/debris
- Bugscope Team let us know if we can help with presets if they are not working as you wish
- 4:15pm
- Bugscope Team in the hour before you log on, we look over the stub for cool stuff and save the positions of those particular things as presets. when you click on the preset, the 'scope drives to that stored position
- Bugscope Team sometimes the preset will not match the image we took because the specimen has drifted a bit since we saved the preset
- Bugscope Team 20 microns is the same as 20 micrometers, or a 50th of a millimeter
- Student Can we get a closer look at the spider fang
Bugscope Team there you are
- Bugscope Team there is where the venom comes out
- Bugscope Team you can see in the upper left on the bottom part of the fang there are even little serrations in the fang
- Student What is the "stuff" around it?
Bugscope Team some of it is web -- silk
- Bugscope Team some of it is dried goo
- Student is the string that runs across the fang web silk?
Bugscope Team yes it is!
- 4:20pm
- Bugscope Team what we see below is some juju that had dried onto the fang and then cracked off
- Student can we get a better look at the spider's head?
Bugscope Team this is the best we can do, DaddyO; it's mounted so we cannot see the eyes
- Bugscope Team so here you can see its chelicers
- Student can we get a close up on the spiders legfs
- Student *legs
- Bugscope Team this spider was definitely using these special hairs on its legs before it was captured. It was sitting on the wall
- 4:26pm
- Student Opps. I meant lefs
- Student what is that circle on the leg
- Bugscope Team that is some kind of latex, I think
- Bugscope Team hard to tell
- Bugscope Team i think scott it right. it doesn't look like a pollen grain or mold spore
- Student so it's not part of the spider
Bugscope Team no definitely not
- Bugscope Team it is really cool that we can see all of those fine setae
- Student can we possibly take a look at it's eyes?
Bugscope Team no I am sorry -- we had a choice between the chelicerae and the eyes, and we mounted it upside down
- 4:31pm
- Bugscope Team this is as close as you can get
- Bugscope Team yeah its head it very much stuck down right now. sometimes we can see a little bit of it, but not with this one
- Student I am a student, what are those cirlces in the backround
Bugscope Team those are bubbles in the carbon doublestick tape, and they have silver paint on them
- Student Can we see the part of the spider that spins the web?
Bugscope Team this is one of the spinnerets
- 4:37pm
- Student how many spineretes are there
Bugscope Team usually there are four
- Student what exactly are we looking at?
Bugscope Team this is the tip of the abdomen
- Student where are the spinneretts
Bugscope Team it is kind of hard to see them with all the setae around them
- Bugscope Team this one is pointed to the left
- Bugscope Team this spider is very hairy
- Bugscope Team you can see some web
- Bugscope Team and a whole lot of plumose (pine tree like) setae
- 4:42pm
- Bugscope Team the things right in the center, smooth, are the spinnerets -- the parts that actually spit out silk
- Student is this structure we see the spinnerete?
Bugscope Team this is one but you cannot see the tip, which is to the left and up
- Student Is this a ladybug head?
- Student does it use one spinnerete at a time
Bugscope Team I am not sure. Some produce non sticky silk, and some produce sticky silk.
- 4:47pm
- Bugscope Team spider silk is made of protein. Sometimes when they get extra hungry they will eat their old webs
- Bugscope Team they are conscientious recyclers
- Student are the spinneretes in differnet spots
Bugscope Team I am not sure we are using the terminology correctly. There are usually four turret-like things at the tip of the abdomen, and there are a number of silk-producing spigot-like things in each one.
- Bugscope Team recently it was discovered that some spiders, I think tarantulas, can also exude silk from the tips of their legs.
- Bugscope Team we also know that many caterpillars, like the ladybug larva we see now, produce silk from organs on their head
- Bugscope Team I believe that is where the silk comes from when caterpillars produce cocoons.
- 4:52pm
- Bugscope Team here is a nice view of a moth eye
- Bugscope Team you can see the ommatidia -- the eye facets. and you can also see that there are setae sticking out from between some of the ommatidia.
- 4:58pm
- Teacher Is it possible to see a whole spider?
Bugscope Team today it is not. we made a sample with one spider on it and had to make a choice of how to position it. the sample is coated with gold-palladium, put inside the vacuum chamber, and pumped down so we can beam electrons at it in a vacuum.
- Bugscope Team if we had a small spider and made a new sample you could see all of it, but you'd have to make a choice of what you wanted to see. because spiders are softbodied, they shrivel up when they dry, and it is hard to know what they're going to look like at high mag.
- Teacher What is an aphid Cornicle?
Bugscope Team they are attached to the abdomen of aphids where they exude a wax that helps protect them
- Teacher It seems that we have reached the end of our time. Thank you for you time!
Bugscope Team thanks for joining us today!
- Bugscope Team Thank you!
