Connected on 2012-05-29 08:00:00 from Manatee, Florida, United States
- 7:36am
- Bugscope Team sample is in microscope and pumping down
- Bugscope Team vacuum is close
- Bugscope Team once the vacuum is good we will start making presets for this morning's session
- 7:46am
- 7:51am
- 7:59am
- Bugscope Team Good morning, Barney!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team we are still collecting presets from your sample, but please feel free to ask us questions
- 8:04am
- Teacher Good morning, from Myakka Elementary in Florida. Is that a bee?
- Bugscope Team presently, this is a small beetle
- Bugscope Team see its compound eyes, its mandibles, and its antennae
- Bugscope Team ?
- Bugscope Team also, you can see one of its legs
- Bugscope Team this is one of its six legs, and we can tell that it would have no problem crawling on a vertical surface
- Teacher Why do they have the claw-like on their legs?
Bugscope Team they are much like hands, to us; many insects have claws, and some of them are capable of gripping, like we do with our hands
- Bugscope Team we see lots of hairs, called setae, that help the beetle sense its surroundings
- Bugscope Team insects do not have skin, like we do; instead they have an exoskeleton, which is like a shell, or like if we were wearing armor
- 8:09am
- Bugscope Team the setae stick through that shell and allow the insect to sense its environment
- Bugscope Team some of the setae (the hairs, or bristles) are chemosensory, meaning that they can be used to pick up scents in the air
- Bugscope Team some of the setae are mechanosensory, for touch sensing
- Bugscope Team this is a very small ant
- Bugscope Team see its compound eye?
- Bugscope Team you can also see one of its antennae
- Bugscope Team and you can see one mandible -- one of its jaws
- Bugscope Team the antennae connects to the head at a ball and socket joint
- Bugscope Team but it is the tiny palps that help it taste and sometimes manipulate its food
- Bugscope Team the ant is so small that it was hard to hold, even with forceps, and place in an upright position on the stub for you today
- Bugscope Team ants depend much more on chemical signals they collect through their antennae than they depend on sight
- 8:14am
- Guest Does a wasp have compound eyes?
Bugscope Team yes it does! and they are usually much much larger than those of the ant
- Bugscope Team here we could actually count the ommatidia -- the individual facets of the compound eye
- Bugscope Team but some wasps can have as many as 17,000 ommatidia per compound eye
- Bugscope Team because I am using the SEM (scanning electron microscope) computer, I can also help focus
- Bugscope Team this is one of the fruitfly's six claws
- Bugscope Team the tiny frilly parts are its means of sticking to surfaces
- Bugscope Team some of the other features help the fruit fly sense when, for example, it is grabbing something
- Bugscope Team see the things to the left that look like little flower stalks?
- Bugscope Team those are 'tenent setae,' which the fruit fly uses to help it stick to surfaces
- 8:19am
- Bugscope Team insects have a head, a thorax (to which the legs are attached), six legs, an abdomen, and two antennae
- Bugscope Team the ends of the legs -- the last 5 or so segments, are called 'tarsi'
- Guest why does the centipede antennas have little sqiguls at the end?
Bugscope Team they may be areas that are more sensitive to chemicals in the air, or that it can sense by touching
- Bugscope Team now we see three legs, and they are stretched toward a filter that Cate put on the stub that has bacteria on it
- Bugscope Team the background to what we are looking at now is carbon doublestick tape
- Bugscope Team please let us know if you have any trouble activating other presets today
- Bugscope Team this is one of the large bee's claws
- Bugscope Team you can see that it has lots of fur, or setae, on its arm
- 8:24am
- Bugscope Team those spikes, or spines, are setae that let the bee know when it has something in its grasp
- Bugscope Team you can see bubbles in the carbon tape in the background
- Bugscope Team you can click on the little round things to get the 'scope to center on that area
- Guest Why does a beetle have spikes on its legs?
Bugscope Team the spikes are sometimes defensive, to help keep the insect from being bitten
- Teacher What are the circular structures in the upper right?
Bugscope Team good job driving!
Bugscope Team I think you have found some pollen grains
- Bugscope Team those are some kind of pollen
- Student What are the lines on a wasp's wing?
- Bugscope Team we don't always recognize things we see at this level
- Bugscope Team but we see a lot of pollen, and we see a lot of mold spores
- Bugscope Team you can see, also, that the surface of the claw is patterned, and those shapes make it stronger
- 8:29am
- Bugscope Team in the very center we see tiny pores in something that looks like plant material
- Bugscope Team Monarch butterflies have setae on their claws that help them 'taste' what it is that they land on
- Student How many legs are on a beetle
Bugscope Team six! always six, with insects
- Bugscope Team insect legs are jointed, like our legs, but of course they have more joints than we do
- Teacher do you have a dragon fly?
Bugscope Team not today. there is a ladybug I bet I can find for you, and also a ladybug larva
- Bugscope Team maybe a mosquito as well
- Guest what is your best estimate of how long have spiders lived?
- Bugscope Team spiders are said to have been around for about 400 million years
- 8:34am
- Bugscope Team this is salt from a Wendy's restaurant
- Bugscope Team spiders have eight legs -- they are arachnids, not insects
- Guest why do so bugs have scale.
Bugscope Team butterflies, moths, silverfish, mosquitoes, and few other insects have scales, which serve a lot of purposes, including helping escape from spider webs
- Teacher We would love to see the lady bug.
Bugscope Team Ok I will look for it now...
- Student were is the stinger on the bee.
Bugscope Team it is at the tip of its abdomen
- Bugscope Team this is the ladybug!
- 8:40am
- Guest why do bee have hare
Bugscope Team the hair is sensory, for one thing, and it also helps the bee keep its body temperature stable
- Bugscope Team if the bee did not have any hair it could not sense its environment, but it would also be cold, sometimes, slowing it way down
- Teacher Why do insects have compound eyes?
Bugscope Team compound eyes allow insects to see around them more readily, without moving their heads too much; they also are very sensitive to changes in the visual field -- so they can sense quickly when something is coming after them
- Bugscope Team here you can see the compound eyes on either side of the ladybug's head
- Bugscope Team many flying insects also have three 'simple' eyes, called ocelli, on the tops of their heads
- Bugscope Team ocelli help flying insects keep track of where they are with respect to the sun
- Teacher The students are really enjoying this. We are switching groups right now.
Bugscope Team sweet!
- Bugscope Team ladybug palp
- 8:45am
- Bugscope Team this is a mosquito
- 8:50am
- Bugscope Team cool
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a female mosquito
- Bugscope Team its eyes are a bit desiccated
- Bugscope Team its proboscis is sticking up toward us, out of focus
- Bugscope Team it has large compound eyes that cover most of its head
- Bugscope Team and most of its body is covered with scales, which are kind of like tiny feathers
- Bugscope Team scales up close resemble potato chips with ridges
- Teacher Where is the stinger?
Bugscope Team it is pointed right toward us
- Bugscope Team the sharp parts of the mosquito's proboscis are inside, where we do not see them
- Bugscope Team the mouthparts are all encased in a long tube called the proboscis. The tube looks similar to an elephant's trunk
- Bugscope Team female mosquitoes are the ones that bite -- they need to have the protein from blood so they can lay eggs
- 8:55am
- Bugscope Team it has sharp cutting parts within that work like steak knives to cut into our skin. The it has a tube which is drinks from and also injects us with an anticoagulant
- Bugscope Team we can tell this is a female mosquito because it does not have ornate, frilly antennae like the males do
- Bugscope Team the thing that looks like a donut is the base of the antenna, called a pedicel
- Student why do centipied have so many legs
Bugscope Team that is the way they have worked out having a long body that can crawl into little cracks and move among leaf litter
- Guest how do grasshoppers defeat there enemys
Bugscope Team one thing that some grasshoppers do is surprise their predators by flashing the bright colors on the insides of their wingsings
- Bugscope Team grasshoppers can also force fluids through their cuticle onto the surface of their bodies, and sometimes those fluids are offensive -- they smell bad
- 9:01am
- Guest what happens when a bee stings you
Bugscope Team when a honeybee stings a mammal, with its thick skin, like ours, it loses its whole stinger, which gets stuck in that thick skin
- Bugscope Team the honeybee's stinger gets pulled out of its body, so it now has a hole in its body, and it essentially bleeds to death
- Bugscope Team honeybees can sting other insects, for example, and not lose their stingers
- Bugscope Team wasps can sting repeatedly, as we know
- Student why can't you feel the mosquitoes/
Bugscope Team sometimes we can, but they have very fine cutting mouthparts that make it very easy to bite you without you noticing
- Bugscope Team when a horsefly bites you, you definitely feel it because it does not have fine stylets cutting straight into your skin; instead it has slashing/cutting mouthparts
- Bugscope Team horseflies slash your skin and then suck up the blood that comes to the surface
- 9:06am
- Bugscope Team here we are looking at one of the six claws of a large black bee
- Bugscope Team this is an ant, so very small...
- Bugscope Team if you look at the scalebar, just below the image we see now, it reads "200 microns"
- Bugscope Team 200 microns is one fifth of a millimeter
- Teacher Is that an eye?
Bugscope Team the bumpy part is the compound eye yes
- Bugscope Team a milllimeter is one thousand microns, or micrometers
- Guest what does a centapead eat
Bugscope Team centipedes are usually predators, and they eat insects and other arthropods
- Bugscope Team those are probably a different species of mosquito that have the stripes.
- Student why do the big mosquitoes have strips on it's wing's
Bugscope Team different mosquitoes have different patterns, in part so they can recognize their own species; they can also recognize their own species by the noise the wings make, so if the wings are different they will make a different noise
- 9:11am
- Guest Why does the spider have hair.
Bugscope Team the spiders have hair for the same reason other insects have hairs. The spiders use their sensitive hairs to tell them what is going on around it's environment. Some specialized hairs on the spiders are good for sensing vibrations.
- Teacher Can insects see behind their head?
Bugscope Team when they have large compound eyes they have better peripheral vision, so they can see much more than, for example, we can
Bugscope Team also, many flying insects have extra eyes on the top of the head that register light and shadows, so those 'ocelli' also likely help alert them to something that might be approaching them
- Guest does a dragonfly have a stinger
Bugscope Team no they don't, but they are aggressive with other insects. They will have little fights with other dragonflies, and I think the spikes that are found on their wings help shred the other dragonfly's wings. Dragonflies are also the fastest flying insect
- Bugscope Team ants like this one are almost all females
- Student Why dose the bettle die in the sun?
Bugscope Team some last longer than others; it may be because they cannot regulate their body temperature very well and get too hot
- 9:18am
- Teacher How many legs does a centepied have?
Bugscope Team they are said to have from less than 20 to more than 300 legs; they are also said to have odd numbers of pairs of legs, never even numbers of pairs
- Bugscope Team also, to help distinguish centipedes from millipedes, one thing you can do is count how many legs they have per segment; millipedes will have two pairs of legs per segment (four legs), whereas centipedes will have one pair of legs per segment (two legs per segment)
- Guest why are the wings on bugs so fragile
Bugscope Team they seem thin and fragile to us, but to an insect they are pretty durable. They are made of the same material as the rest of their exoskeleton
Bugscope Team insects have an accelerated life, compared to us
- Bugscope Team also most adult insects don't live longer than a month. But looks like SEM (Scot) pretty much already said that
- Student how many legs does a centapaed has
Bugscope Team they can have from about 17 pairs to maybe 147 pairs
- Bugscope Team so from 34 legs to actually almost 300
- 9:24am
- Guest why does spiders have thick hair?
Bugscope Team spider hair has different purposes; one is sensing vibration, one in some cases is being an irritant. That is, some spiders have what are called 'urticating' hairs that they release that make potential predators itch
- Teacher What is an aphid?
Bugscope Team they are a type of true bug that is an agricultural pest. They eat plants and exude honeydew on them. Some insects will harvest the honeydew. Ladybugs are notoriously known for eating aphids
- Bugscope Team we also know that hair (usually called 'setae') can help with keeping the body warm
- Bugscope Team this is an adult ladybug
- Bugscope Team this is the head...
- Bugscope Team you can see that its compound eyes are streamlined into its head, on either side of the head
- Student where does an aphid live?
Bugscope Team they live on plants. When there are too many in the area, then the next batch of aphids born will have wings and those with wings will migrate to a new area.
- Teacher Is there a difference between girl and boy ladybugs?
Bugscope Team there is a difference, but as with many insects you cannot always tell from outside
- Bugscope Team many insects look the same from the outside, but inside they are different; fortunately, usually they themselves can tell
- 9:29am
- Guest what happens when a ant bites you
Bugscope Team ants can bite, and it might hurt if they have large mouthparts; but they can (some of them) also sting you, and some of those stings are very painful
- Guest do lady bugs bite
Bugscope Team the asian ladybugs do
Bugscope Team we have read that Asian ladybugs sometimes confuse your skin with things they like to eat
- Teacher What is the clumpy looking stuff?
Bugscope Team it is probably leftover food and other debris that did not get into the mouth
- Student what happens when a hornet stings you?
Bugscope Team they could sting you again if they wanted to. They could also call other hornets to help them. Those in the wasp family are aggressive.
- Guest why dose it hirt when a ant bites you
Bugscope Team sometimes they have venom that is very painful; sometimes they can shoot formic acid at you, and that can sting
- Bugscope Team this is cool
- 9:34am
- Teacher What is a hamuli?
- Bugscope Team bees and wasps have four wings (compared to flies, which have two, and dragonflies, which also have four wings)
- Bugscope Team one reason bees and wasps have four wings is so they can fold them better when they go into their hive or nest
- Bugscope Team when they fly, however, bees and wasps hook their fore- and hind-wings together
- Bugscope Team the curved hooks we see now are on the hind-wing, and they are what make the hind- and fore-wings attach for flying
- Student what hapenens when a beetle bites you
Bugscope Team usually nothing. They won't sting you. It should usually just be like a pinching.
- Bugscope Team When Cate made this sample for today, she cut the wings from bee and put them flat on the stub so we could see the hamuli -- the wing-hooks -- very clearly
Bugscope Team cut the wings from 'the' bee
- Teacher Can we an insect with a wing?
Bugscope Team this is the edge of the wing of the bee
- 9:39am
- Bugscope Team we can likely also see the wings on the mosquito, and also we can see the wings on the fruitfly
- Bugscope Team whoa this is cool!
- Bugscope Team look what we found on one of the hamuli!
- Bugscope Team the tiny particles we had seen briefly on the hamuli are called brochosomes, and they are less than 400 nanometers in diameter; they are nanoparticles
- 9:45am
- Guest We are switching groups right now.
Bugscope Team cool. I will go back and find the brochosomes.
- Bugscope Team this is what a cute little ladybug looks like before it becomes an adult
- Bugscope Team this is one of its arms
- Bugscope Team we can see that it is broken at the top, near where it connects with the thorax
- 9:52am
- Guest why do bugs need intenas
Bugscope Team the use their antennas to read chemical signals from other insects.
- Teacher Why do the beetles have hair?
Bugscope Team one reason they have hair is so they can sense their environment, because they do not have skin like we do with nerve endings in it; they also do not have noses
- Guest can bugs burp?
Bugscope Team I don't think so.
Bugscope Team they can fart- Insect flatulence may account for one-fifth of all the methane emissions on this planet
- Teacher Is that an eye?
Bugscope Team that is one of the very short antennae on the ladybug larva's head
- Bugscope Team now we can see three small crumpled eyes; they are called stemmata in caterpillars, and a larva is a caterpillar
- Guest why do grass hopers have spiks on there lages
- Student why dose a grasshoper have spikse on there legs
Bugscope Team the spikes along their hind legs are used to make noises. They rub them on the forewings.
Bugscope Team kind of like a needle on a record
- 9:58am
- Bugscope Team the noises the grasshoppers make are presumably to attract mates
- Student how do a dragonfly grow skin on its wings
Bugscope Team its wings are made of chitin, which is the same stuff the cuticle -- the exoskeleton -- is made of. they do not really have skin on their wings; it is just very thin chitin
- Guest how fast does a betel go
Bugscope Team beetles fly at varying speeds, but often fairly quickly; they are usually not that good at flying and go only short distances
- Student why does the bug have sharp leg
Bugscope Team they seem sharp to us because they are so small, but sometimes the sharpness has to do with protection from being bitten, since being sharp is kind of like a thorn
- Bugscope Team the legs are not sharp to them.
- Bugscope Team Ants often look like they are eating another insect, but those are palps. Palps are mouthparts used to taste or move around food
- Bugscope Team good job driving!
- 10:03am
- Bugscope Team often ants do not see very well, although there are species of ants that do see quite well
- Bugscope Team ants get most of the information they need from the environment, and from other ants, as chemical signals, through their antennae
- Guest Why do dragonflies have twis wings
Bugscope Team they have 2 pairs of wings to help them maneuver around better. Flies are the only flying insects that have just 1 pair of wings. Ants, wasps, and bees have 2 pairs but they hook them together to make them work like 1 pair
- Student How dose the dragonfly get so big of eles.
Bugscope Team part of the dragonfly lifecycle occurs underwater, where they are also predators. if they feed well when they are larvae, or nymphs, they can become large dragonflies
- Guest how high can dragon flies fly.
Bugscope Team dragonflies usually fly around 7-9ft above or near water
- 10:09am
- Student Can bugs fly as high as birds fly?
Bugscope Team this I am not sure about; some insects get carried along by the wind, and they may not be exactly flying; I imagine birds can fly higher but really don't know
- Teacher How do mosquitos drink our blood?
Bugscope Team only female mosquitoes bite us, and the reason is because they need a blood meal to reproduce
- Bugscope Team I just read something that said that birds fly higher than insects fly; when insects get super high in the sky they are carried along by winds
- Guest what do betels eat
Bugscope Team that depends on the type of beetle. Some eat other insects, some eat plants/wood, and some eat dead matter
- Guest what does a milled peed do
Bugscope Team millipedes are often predatory -- they eat insects and other arthropods
- Teacher What part stings us?
- Bugscope Team actually I was wrong about the majority of millipedes -- most of them are herbivorous; they feed on plant material
- 10:14am
- Student Were are mosquitos ears
Bugscope Team they don't have ears but their scales can help feel vibrations
Bugscope Team male mosquitoes have frilly antennae compared to the females, and the antennae are very sensitive to vibration, which is what sound is. the males can sense the wingbeats of females that are in the same species using their antennae
- Guest why do grass hoppers have spikes
Bugscope Team they rub the spikes on their legs along their wings to create noises to attract mates
- Guest how do dragonfly fly so fast.
Bugscope Team they can fly around 35 miles an hour
Bugscope Team the shape and light weight of the body coupled with the large double pairs of wings make dragonflies not only fast but also able to maneuver very well in flight
- Student How do flies fly so fast when you try to slap it ! . . .
Bugscope Team flies can see you very well with their compound eyes, and they can also respond quickly to the wind you produce when you try to swat them
- 10:21am
- Bugscope Team one thing about compound eyes is that they are very sensitive, with all of those individual lenses, to changes in the visual field. they can act quickly to changes in the visual field
- Guest how do ticks jump so high
Bugscope Team they don't jump. They either fall from trees onto your head, or they stick their legs up in the air while holding onto long grass so that when you walk by they can cling onto you. From there they will make their way up your legs to your head usually
- Bugscope Team fleas can jump high. They have hind legs that are like a rabbits hinglegs
- Student does a flea turn into a tick
Bugscope Team no they are different species
- Teacher Is that pollen?
Bugscope Team no, it looks like some dust and dirt. Maybe some sort of dried goop as well
- 10:26am
- Guest why do bugs have so much dots on there eyes?
Bugscope Team the dots are called ommatidia, and they are lenses, almost like individual eyes; they help the insect see all around it
- Bugscope Team the two big round things are a single pollen grain that has two lobes, but the rest of the stuff is dirt and debris
- Student how does a mother ant lay two egg
Bugscope Team the queen ant lays thousands of eggs
- Guest why are ticks so small?
Bugscope Team they are similar to mites, which are also small. Ticks are a parasite that only needs to live on blood
- 10:31am
- Bugscope Team wow cool we can see the internal components of the proboscis
- Bugscope Team this is comparable to how a mosquito's mouthparts work
- Bugscope Team the proboscis is large, like a jackhammer, but the part that pierces the plant is smaller and sharper and inside
- Bugscope Team those smooth curvy things are the sharp parts
- Bugscope Team they have cutting tips that we cannot see
- Bugscope Team aphids live on the fluids inside leaves, and they are destructive to plants. that is why ladybugs, like this one, are very helpful to us
- 10:36am
- Guest what tipe of ant fly
Bugscope Team the ants that fly are either the queen, for a short time; or the male ants, who breed with queens from other colonies in flight
- Bugscope Team so usually if you see an ant with wings it is a male
- Teacher What are the tiny hairs used for?
Bugscope Team some of the hairs let the insect know that it is touching something; some tell whether what it is touching is hot or cold; some of the hairs can taste; and some of the hairs we see now help filter out stuff that the ladybug does not want to go into its mouth
- Bugscope Team good job driving!
- Bugscope Team this looks like mashed up food -- it could be mashed up aphids!
- Bugscope Team when we do this kind of work we often see things that we do not recognize
- Bugscope Team now we are looking at nanoparticles
- 10:41am
- Bugscope Team we are imaging now at 89,600x
- Teacher Thank you so much for this opportunity. The students need to leave for lunch so we are signing off. They are so excited, many are asking how to find your site from home.
- Bugscope Team normally when we work with researchers to look at their samples we have an advantage in that we can get closer to the samples and see that much better
- Bugscope Team thanks for joining us today!
- Teacher Thank you, have a great day!
- Bugscope Team You can access your chat and images from today at any time by going to your member page
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-190
- Bugscope Team Thank you!
- Bugscope Team below is the link to this page -- your member page
- Bugscope Team you can also look it up online by going to the Bugscope home page and looking into the archives for 2011-190
- Bugscope Team Bye!
