Connected on 2012-07-11 10:00:00 from Harris, Texas, United States
- 9:06am
- Bugscope Team sample is pumping down
- Bugscope Team good morning, HANC!
- Bugscope Team if I am not mistaken, we are due to connect in an hour
- Bugscope Team is that true?
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- Bugscope Team Can you see this message?
- Bugscope Team uh oh
- Bugscope Team Naletta can you read this?
- Teacher Yes, we can read it. We see the microscope I think.
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Teacher We are having lots of rain here so our schedule is wonky. Can you remind me of the hours we are actually scheduled with you. is it 10-12?
- Bugscope Team Thank you. I just changed the screen so it is blank
- 9:11am
- Bugscope Team yes 10 to 12 today
- Bugscope Team I had the screen on CCD so we could see the inside of the vacuum chamber; now I'm getting ready to turn on the beam.
- Teacher Sweet!!! We'll see you at 10!
Bugscope Team awesome
- 9:18am
- 9:23am
- 9:30am
- 9:36am
- 9:43am
- Bugscope Team Hey Scott. Kind of here.
- Bugscope Team Doh
- Bugscope Team Ok better
- 9:57am
- Teacher the seven and eight year olds are here!
- Bugscope Team Yay!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team This is the face of a click beetle.
- Bugscope Team It's one of those long black beetles that has a click joint about 1/3 down its body.
- Teacher cool they thought it was a fly!
- Bugscope Team you can see its eyes, round, on each side, and below them you can see the bases of the antennae
- Teacher we would like to know why you became entomologists.
Bugscope Team we are actually electron microscopists, but because we have been working with insects and other comparable arthropods for so many years now, we know a little bit about entomology
- Teacher wow!
- Bugscope Team we have a real entomologist named Joe, or Jose, who logs in when he has time.
- Bugscope Team this is a super tiny praying mantis Cate found the other day
- Bugscope Team you can see its compound eyes, out to the edges of its head
- Bugscope Team and you can see clearly one of its arms, with which it grasps its prey so it can eat it
- Bugscope Team I think of praying mantises as tyrannosauruses of the insect world
- 10:02am
- Teacher why does the praying mantis have such a big claw for such a small creature
Bugscope Team they use those big claws with all of the spikes on them to grab and hold their prey so they can bite them
- Bugscope Team some praying mantises are large enough to be able to catch hummingbirds
- Bugscope Team it actually has small 'hands,' but its forearms are spikey
- Teacher we saw of video of that yesterday!
Bugscope Team wow! up to date!
- Bugscope Team this, now, is the underside of one of those cute little daddylonglegs
- Bugscope Team they're not truly spiders
- Bugscope Team well actually they are considered arachnids
- Teacher why are their legs so long?
- Teacher what is the difference between a daddy long leg and a spider?
Bugscope Team there are a number of differences, in their eyes, and in them having pincers like this, and the structure of their body
- Bugscope Team to me daddylonglegs seem more like crustaceans
- Teacher how do they catch their food? How do they use their pincers?
- 10:07am
- Bugscope Team it is complicated because daddylonglegs come in different types as well
- Bugscope Team they eat insects and spiders, and they use their pincers but also have fangs that hold venom
- Bugscope Team oh the cool things are the mites on the earwig!
- Teacher do you have a favorite insect that is on the scope right now? We are trying to decide where to send the scope.
Bugscope Team sorry I was reading about daddylonglegs for a sec...
- Bugscope Team Scot loves seeing the mites
- Bugscope Team this is just beneath the earwig's head
- Bugscope Team so cool
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag a bit lower you can see that this one has friends with it
- Teacher so tell us about the mites!
Bugscope Team earwigs live or spend a lot of time in dirt, and they seem to acquire mites quite easily
- Bugscope Team the mites live on the earwigs, in places where they cannot be rubbed off.
- 10:12am
- Teacher what do the mites do? Do they hurt the earwig?
Bugscope Team we are not sure just what they do, and whether they feed on scraps of food or they suck hemolymph from the earwig
- Bugscope Team We don't think they hurt the earwigs. There are mites like those found on bees that are thought to be harmful though
- Bugscope Team hemolymph is what we call insect 'blood'\
- Bugscope Team these mites do not have eyes that we can see
- Bugscope Team sometimes we find mites with little round eyes as well
- Bugscope Team they often hang out in places like this
- Teacher have you ever found anything living on a mite?
Bugscope Team we thought we might've found a smaller mite once, but it was hard to tell for sure
- Bugscope Team mites do get mites, but we have not seen that conclusively
- Bugscope Team the bee!
- Bugscope Team you can see that the honeybee's compound eyes are covered with long setae that look like hairs to us
- Teacher how powerful is your microscope?
Bugscope Team We can see things as small as 2 nanometers! Light microscopes aren't nearly as powerful. We can magnify around 200,000x
- Bugscope Team and you can see that curving part that covers the glossa, which is the 'tongue.'
- Teacher is this a European honey bee? we just learned that we have 8 different native bumble bees in Texas.
Bugscope Team I think it is a European honeybee that lives here.
- 10:19am
- Teacher what do the setae do?
Bugscope Team insects and comparable arthropods do not have skin, like we do, with sensitive nerve endings in it. Nor do they have bones, like we do, on the inside. Instead, they have what is called an 'exoskeleton,' which is like a shell, like a shrimp shell or like a coat of armor.
Bugscope Team so the setae stick through the exoskeleton to the outside, and on the inside they are connected to nerves. The setae can be touch- or wind-sensory, hot/cold sensory, scent or chemical odor sensing -- all things that help the insect sense its environment
- Bugscope Team this is one of the back legs, and it has a smooth area on it where the honeybee smears pollen so it can carry it off
- Teacher what are we seeing now?
Bugscope Team so we can see the pollen basket area but no pollen
- Teacher can we see where they carry the pollen?
Bugscope Team we can look and see if the pollen baskets are visible
Bugscope Team The pollen baskets are found where we would think the knees are. The bee's knees :)
- Teacher ok we are heading to the click beetle claw!
- 10:26am
- Teacher is there something caught in the claw? It looks like a bug in the middle.
Bugscope Team the thing in the middle is part of the mechanism the beetle has to let it know when it has something in its grasp
- Bugscope Team the click beetle has these cool claws with lots of spikes on them, and it has some claws with only one spike.
- Bugscope Team there is a lot of juju stuck among the spikes
- Bugscope Team Hi Mrs G!
- Bugscope Team all insects have a head, two antennae, a thorax, and an abdomen
- Bugscope Team they also have six legs, and we often find claws at the ends of the legs
- Guest Hello there
Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Teacher So is the thing on the bottom right of our screen old stuck bug parts?
Bugscope Team the thing with the two bristles sticking up is part of the claw, but there is a lot of dirt and foreign matter on the claw as well
- Teacher ok. we weren't sure we were looking at same thing.
- Bugscope Team spiders often have claws with 'tines' on them like this
- Bugscope Team some insects' claws open and close, and some seem to be fixed in position
- 10:31am
- Bugscope Team to control the claws that open and close there is a tendon called an 'unguitractor' inside the tarsus, which is what the last five segments of the leg or arm are called (tarsi or tarsomeres).
- Teacher Thanks for Bugscope. The nine to twelve year olds are coming in next.
Bugscope Team Cool!
- Bugscope Team Mrs G are you associated with the Arboretum or are you from the Outer World somewhere?
- Bugscope Team of course you are welcome either way
- Bugscope Team I just took us to another one of the click beetle's claws
- Guest I teach 4th grade in Orlando, Fl. and found you through 4Teachers Tools and logged on to check it out. Neat stuff!
Bugscope Team awesome!
- Teacher Hello there! Good morning, this is the 9-12 year old class.. My name is Riley
Bugscope Team Hi Riley!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Hi Riley!
- Teacher Thanks!
- 10:37am
- Bugscope Team you found the little praying mantis!
- Bugscope Team it is so small
- Teacher That's awesome! We have a bunch of bigger ones here this week.
- Bugscope Team you can see from the scalebar below the image that its head is less than 2 mm across.
- Teacher It's so cute!
Bugscope Team haha Yeah!
- Teacher That's really small!
- Bugscope Team they cannot fly until they become adults, and once they become adults and get wings they don't molt or grow any more
- Teacher Student: "What does this mantis eat, being as small as it is?"
Bugscope Team they are pretty agressive and can find smaller insects to eat, like fruit flies
- Bugscope Team aggressive sorry about the misspelling
- Teacher Haha, that's ok
- Teacher "How did you find this mantis? Where was it collected?"
Bugscope Team Cate brought it in from her yard, I think.
- Bugscope Team Cate is on Bugscope today but also working with the atomic force microscope so she cannot pay attention to us all of the time.
- Teacher "What is the habitat of this type of mantis?"
Bugscope Team they live on plants but can also hang out on the outside of your house or apartment
- 10:42am
- Bugscope Team I saw one at a fast food restaurant one time, but it was not ordering food at the counter or the drivethrough.
- Teacher Haha, loitering mantis. Now I have heard everything
- Teacher "Do you know the genus, species of this mantis?"
Bugscope Team No only that it is a young one and that it can be found in central Illinois :)
- Bugscope Team it is likely what is called a Carolina mantis...
- Bugscope Team Stagmomantis carolina
- Bugscope Team Yay Cate is on.
- Bugscope Team Yes sorry I'm in and out
- Teacher That's ok. :)
- Teacher Very neat! Student: "What is its lifespan?" Hi, Cate! Nice talking to you again.
Bugscope Team generally they live about a year. I think the ones in the Tropics can live longer.
- Teacher Cool thanks!
- 10:47am
- Bugscope Team this is the underside (the 'ventral' side) of a daddylonglegs spider
- Teacher Student: "Is this a harvestman, or a daddy-long-legs?"
Bugscope Team some people use those terms interchangeably, so I am not sure
- Bugscope Team this is the kind of daddylonglegs that has a single rounded body, not an extended body
- Teacher " So what is the lifespan of these guys?"
Bugscope Team it is said to be a year, average, as well
- Bugscope Team there are different kind of daddylonglegs/harvestmen. The British call craneflies, which look like giant mosquitoes, daddylonglegs...
- Bugscope Team different 'kinds' or species...
- 10:52am
- Teacher "To tell the diff between male and female?"
- Bugscope Team oops
- Teacher The kids really want me to correct my spelling of harvestman, so... there ya go. :)
- Teacher Ok, cool!
- Teacher "Do you know how to sex the havestman?"
Bugscope Team I don't lnow. In spiders the females are often larger.
- Bugscope Team in other spiders, you can sometimes tell males from females because the palps are big and furry on males and small and more delicate on females.
- Bugscope Team the palps are also called pedipalps, and they are like accessory mouthparts in insects as well as in spiders.
- Bugscope Team this is a honeybee
- Bugscope Team you can see its left compound eye, on the right
- Bugscope Team the eye is covered with setae --- with fine 'hairs'
- Bugscope Team we find setae in most insects and comparable arthropods, and they help them sense their environment in various ways
- Teacher "They want to know the lifespan of these guys, too. " :)
Bugscope Team these are more like 6 weeks or so
- Bugscope Team bees can get worn out from working so hard, and their wings will get frayed
- Bugscope Team bees are related to wasps and to ants
- 10:57am
- Bugscope Team bees and wasps and ants that have wings have four wings
- Bugscope Team ants that have wings are either the queen or the males, which fly\
- Teacher "Does this bee have a stinger?"
Bugscope Team we can go look!
- Bugscope Team now we're closer...
- Teacher OK, now you're just showing off. :)
- Teacher Verdict?
- Bugscope Team you can see the super sharp part in the upper middle of the image we see now
- Teacher The kiddos say there's no stinger. That's the popular vote.
- Teacher So is it under a flap of skin, usually?
Bugscope Team it is at the tip of the abdomen, and it is made of hardened thick chitin, which is what the exoskeleton is made of, but thicker
- Teacher Wow, the more you know!
- Bugscope Team you can see that it has little serrations in it to help cut into your skin
- 11:03am
- Bugscope Team when a honeybee stings another insect it does not die, but when it stings a mammal, its stinger gets stuck in our thick skin and pulled out of the honeybee's body
- Bugscope Team the stinger has a little outboard motor on it that pumps venom into your skin
- Bugscope Team when the stinger and the venom gland (the outboard motor) are pulled out of the honeybee's body, it bleeds to death where the stinger was.
- Bugscope Team this, now, is totally cool
- Bugscope Team it's a mite!
- Teacher I agree!
- Bugscope Team it lives on the exoskeleton of an earwig
- Bugscope Team there are often lots of them on earwigs, like a small colony
- Bugscope Team these mites do not have eyes, and it is hard even to see their heads
- Teacher O, haha!
- Teacher We should have waited
- Teacher Student: " Which side of the mite has the eyes?"
Bugscope Team it would be on the carapace, on the top; that is where we see eyes when we find the kind of mites that have eyes
- Bugscope Team you can take us to another one so we get a different view if you would like
- Bugscope Team you are driving a $600,000 scanning electron microscope
- Teacher "There is a little thing on top of the mite-it looks like a mite on the mite! What is that?"
Bugscope Team I am afraid it is some kind of dirt.
- 11:08am
- Teacher Let's see a different mite!
Bugscope Team I did the driving this time...
- Teacher Thanks!
- Bugscope Team still, it is hard to see the mite's head
- Bugscope Team but we are looking at the earwig's head -- that is what the mite is sheltering under
- Bugscope Team let's try one of its friends...
- Bugscope Team this is the head, so small
- Teacher "Is it possible for mites to get mites?"
Bugscope Team yes it is, but unfortunately we have never seen them -- not yet
- Teacher Is it because they are too small?
Bugscope Team I am not sure. We always look, but they may live on the underside of the larger ones, and we don't see them upside down that often.
- 11:14am
- Bugscope Team now we can see how small they are!
- Bugscope Team the earwig is not that large itself
- Teacher Last question: "Do these mites suck the blood and/or hurt the insect?"
Bugscope Team we are not sure, I'm sorry -- it is hard to find these things out. I am saving my money for an expensive mite book, about $140, that I hope will have all of the answers!
- Teacher thanks* Have a great summer!
- Bugscope Team it is possible that with those large suckers on their limbs they are collecting hemolymph from their host or hostess
- Teacher Alright, thatnks so much! It was great talking with you. We enjoyed it very much.
Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team See you next year!
- Teacher Take care!
- Bugscope Team please apply soon for another session even if it is a year away
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2012-001
- Bugscope Team that is your member page...
- Bugscope Team Mrs G are you still here?
- 11:20am
- Bugscope Team we are shutting down
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- 11:33am
- Teacher HI guys, this is the 5-6 yr old group.
- Teacher What do we have to look at today?
- Teacher is anyone there?
