Connected on 2012-01-19 10:00:00 from Monroe, New York, United States
- 9:21am
- Bugscope Team Hello Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Darwin!
- Bugscope Team we're making presets for your session
- Bugscope Team can you see this?
- 9:26am
- Teacher Yes we can
- Bugscope Team Cool. You are not on 'til 10 our time, correct?
- Bugscope Team of course you are welcome to watch us set up, and if the class is here now we will hurry
- Bugscope Team we are GMT minus 6 hours
- Teacher Right - you are GMT? Class isn't here yet.
Bugscope Team totally cool
- Teacher ok...we mis-filed the email and there was general confusion as to time
- 9:31am
- Teacher and your location, in fact...sorry bad record keeping and to many events taking place at once
- Bugscope Team we're good - will you have a class at 11 your time, 10 our time?
- Bugscope Team or an hour later?
- Bugscope Team we usually have an hour at the end in case someone wants to run longer or there is a messup in that direction
- 9:36am
- Teacher Yes
- Bugscope Team sweet
- Bugscope Team we'll be ready with what we have -- we didn't have just what you asked for
- Bugscope Team and you are welcome to hang out
- Bugscope Team if you have a computer lab so that kids can log in themselves, that would be cool
- Bugscope Team we'll also give you back control as soon as we're done setting up
- 9:42am
- Bugscope Team Darwin we are done with presets and have given you control of the microscope. So you can drive around, check out the presets, etc.
- Bugscope Team Please let us know when you have questions. That's what we're here for.
- 9:47am
- Teacher we didn't send in our samples because they were collected this fall and we didn't manage to preserve them well enough to send them...we'll be happy to see whatever you show...they are young grade 5 students and it is a general environmental class
- Teacher Also, we are not in a lab, but are in a room with a projector screen so everyone will be able to see equally.
- Bugscope Team we were able to get a sowbug and an aquatic fly larva for you
- Bugscope Team no problem about the samples. in the future you can collect aquatic creatures into ethanol -- vodka will work -- and then send them that way.
- Teacher great.....we have aquatic sowbugs and terrestrial ones in our area and have studied both
- Bugscope Team terrestrial samples you can freeze to kill, like in the freezer for a week usually does it. then you can let them air dry on a countertop for another week before sending them loosely wrapped in Kleenex in a non crushable container.
- 9:53am
- Bugscope Team caddisfly larvae like this often have diatoms on them
- Teacher students cannot believe that we are really in control of the microscope...can you assure them that we are?
- Bugscope Team yes you are controlling an electron microscope that costs $600,000!
- Bugscope Team All the insects are inside a vacuum chamber being blasted with electrons to give us this image
- 9:58am
- Bugscope Team the background you see is carbon tape that we use to stick the insects on. It often looks like bubbles or craters
- Bugscope Team the little finger projections here are gills
- Teacher We frequently find this larva in our creek in the rock debris houses they create
- Teacher "bubble" that are to the left of the gills
- Teacher we saw the gills, but students want to know about the small round
Bugscope Team those look like mold spores
- 10:04am
- Bugscope Team there are little aquatic organisms kind of like vorticella that we see on caddisfly larvae sometimes
- Bugscope Team now you can see the mandibles
- Bugscope Team caddisfly larvae are predators
- Bugscope Team as you likely know they are also indicators of water quality; if they're not around the water may not be clean enough for them to live in
- Bugscope Team Darwin please be sure to check out the presets on the screen to the left, and select from them if you would like
- Teacher what is the function of the little hairs we see in the mouth?
- Bugscope Team I just moved us to the leafhopper, for example, but you can select from any of the presets yourself
- Bugscope Team sowbug!
- Bugscope Team here's the sowbug, also known as a pillbug or rolypoly
- 10:11am
- Teacher We find large numbers of these in our woods in old logs, in leaf litter,e tc
- Bugscope Team they like damp dark places
- Bugscope Team they are crustaceans and are said to have gills toward/near the terminal segments
- Bugscope Team you can see why they're called isopods
- Teacher Yes they have equal feet we think there are 14 feet I am a student, Athena
- Bugscope Team that's right- 7 pairs of legs
- 10:17am
- Bugscope Team you can see the head now, in the upper left
- Bugscope Team now the cricket head!
- Bugscope Team it has some stuff all over its mouth and its antennae fell off.
- Bugscope Team the limblike things on the front of the head are palps -- accessory mouthparts
- Bugscope Team Sometimes insects vomit when they die and that could be what is around its mouth
- Bugscope Team the hole on the upper right is where the antenna fell off
- Bugscope Team the compound eye is to the right and down
- Bugscope Team you can see a scale from another insect going across the image diagonally
- 10:22am
- Teacher what am I looking at
Bugscope Team this is the area from which one of the antennae broke off of the cricket's head
- Bugscope Team the thing with ridges is a moth or butterfly wing scale
- Bugscope Team you can see more scales, scattered around
- Bugscope Team it's a little socket for the antenna
- Bugscope Team in the lower right corner you can see part of the compound eye
- Teacher what is the highest magnification we can get
Bugscope Team the microscope will magnify over 800,000x, but we cannot get research quality images at over 250,000x or so
- Bugscope Team good driving!
- Bugscope Team if you went to super high mag you would have to have something to look at or it would not be very interesting
- Bugscope Team when you get a chance to check out the brochosomes, you will be looking at something on the nanoscale
- Teacher are we looking at the compond eye
Bugscope Team yes you are!
- 10:27am
- Bugscope Team it is a bit hard to make out the individual facets, which are called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team it is kind of a smooth compound eye. The mosquito eye shoes you the ommatidia better. Ommatidia are the individual components
- Bugscope Team in roaches, crickets, grasshoppers, and mantises the compound eyes are often rather smooth like this, as Cate says
- Bugscope Team when a mosquito dies its body becomes dehydrated like this, and the compound eyes collapse like a basketball with no air in it
- Teacher what are the holes on his face
Bugscope Team those are where palps used to be. Palps are mouthparts that are for tasting food
- Bugscope Team the donut like things are where the antenna were
- Bugscope Team you can see that this mosquito really got rolled around after it died
- 10:33am
- Bugscope Team you can also see its proboscis, through which the females suck blood
- Bugscope Team that is the tube that is curved off to the right
- Bugscope Team you can see an ant in the upper right...
- Bugscope Team and one to the upper left now
- Bugscope Team limbs can fall off easily once insects die and dry out
Bugscope Team yes we did not do that on purpose
- Bugscope Team these ants are so small that it is difficult to position them when we make the sample stub
- Bugscope Team see the compound eye?
- Bugscope Team and the antennae?
- Teacher yes we do
- Bugscope Team ants get most of their information via their antennae, which pick up even very faint chemical signals, like perfume in the air
- Bugscope Team some ant species do not have eyes, and although some ants see very well, most do not
- 10:38am
- Bugscope Team you can see that the ant has microsetae -- super tiny 'hairs' on its head
- Teacher why is it so fuzzy
Bugscope Team some insects are hairier than others but those hairs- setae- are there to give information to senses like touch or whether it's hot or cold
- Bugscope Team this is a spider's fang, and here we actually broke into the head when we were trying to make it more apparent for you
- Bugscope Team they don't have soft sensitive skin like us, they have hard shells that, without those hairs, wouldn't know if something was brushing again it. They work like cat whiskers
- Bugscope Team the spider is on its back
- Bugscope Team spiders are like insects in that they also depend on sensitive setae (hairs) to give them information about their surroundings
- Bugscope Team some spiders also have what are called 'urticating hairs' that they can release when something is getting too close
- Bugscope Team all those hairs help them feel vibrations
- 10:43am
- Bugscope Team the urticating hairs irritate the nasal linings of dogs and other mammals and discourage them from bothering the spider
- Teacher did the eye dry out
Bugscope Team the spider's eyes were on the other side of the body where we could not see them
- Bugscope Team now we are looking into the Mexican jumping bean, and all we see are lots and lots of scales, which are actually also a type of setae
- Bugscope Team the moth hatched through this trapdoor
- Bugscope Team and the scales show us that it was somewhat of a struggle for the moth to hatch
- Teacher what type of spider is it
Bugscope Team it's a small brown spider, but we do not know just what species it is
Bugscope Team some type of house spider
Bugscope Team i think it was a wolf spider
- Bugscope Team the moth!
- Bugscope Team you can see its compound eyes, which are much more complex, apparently, and have many more ommatidia than those of the ant
- 10:49am
- Bugscope Team it is covered with scales, which are helpful to have in a number of ways
- Bugscope Team you can see that one of the palps is broken off, and the other is incomplete and the scales have been stripped off of part of it
- Bugscope Team there are thousands of ommatidia in each of the compound eyes
- Bugscope Team there is one of the antennae
- Bugscope Team one way that scales help insects like moths, butterflies, mosquitoes, and silverfish is by falling off so easily. it means that if they fly or run into a web the scales might stick to the web while the insect can slip out
- Bugscope Team in life, insects are probably annoyed by stuff being on their eyes and are usually able to clean them off with their legs
- Bugscope Team scales also seem to function like feathers, to a bird; and they are also responsible for the color patterns we see
- 10:54am
- Bugscope Team this is the leafhopper's claw, and it is covered with brochosomes
- Bugscope Team brochosomes are nanoparticles that only leafhoppers produce
- Bugscope Team the little balls are the brochosomes. The weird bright areas are where the sample is charging with electrons
- Bugscope Team leafhoppers form brochosomes in the Malpighian tubules, and they have what is called an 'anointing behavior' in which they spread them onto their exoskeleton
- Bugscope Team I'm not sure where on the claw we are right now
- Bugscope Team we're looking in an area that is not coated well with gold-palladium
- Bugscope Team there are better places to go to higher mag
- 10:59am
- Bugscope Team that cavern looking area is where the claw squeezing together
- Bugscope Team whoa!
- Bugscope Team this is a stinger belonging to a cicada killer wasp. Its name derived from what it does
- Bugscope Team cicada killers sting cicadas, paralyzing them, and then they carry them home
- 11:05am
- Bugscope Team a cicada killer drags the cicada into its burrow, in the ground, and lays at least one egg on it. when the egg hatches, the larva can eat the snack that the cicada killer thoughtfully provided
- Teacher what does the grove do
Bugscope Team the groove may allow the sting to penetrate more easily
- Teacher this wasp?
- Teacher how big is a wasp
Bugscope Team they can be two inches long, and I think sometimes longer
- Bugscope Team this is one of the bigger ones.Little bigger than a bumblebee
- Bugscope Team the males do not sting, and the females will not sting people unless they are surprised or handled roughly
- Teacher thank you - that was a whole class "shout out" we have to go to lunch. Students want to know if we can sign up again this year ?
- Bugscope Team you can always apply
- Bugscope Team please sign up for next year soon -- we have been overwhelmed with applications and are booked at least several months ahead
- Teacher we will.
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Teacher ttyl
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-14
- Bugscope Team see you next time!
- 11:10am
- Teacher we love this-science 5
