Connected on 2012-06-16 15:00:00 from Whatcom, Washington, United States
- 1:57pm
- Bugscope Team sample is pumping down
- 2:09pm
- 2:14pm
- 2:19pm
- Bugscope Team now making presets
- 2:26pm
- 2:31pm
- 2:38pm
- Bugscope Team we are ready to roll
- 2:47pm
- Bugscope Team be right back...
- Bugscope Team okay back!
- 2:52pm
- Bugscope Team Mayfly
- 2:58pm
- Teacher We are here! Hello!
- Bugscope Team Cheryl and Maria!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team yay
- Bugscope Team Do you recognize this critter?
- Teacher No, what is it?-Maria
- Bugscope Team you can see one of its compound eyes, two antennae, the flat top of its head.
- Bugscope Team Mayfly larva
- Teacher Oh. We were just looking at those.
- Bugscope Team C&M you have the ability to drive, presently.
- Bugscope Team hello Welan and Diddow!
- Bugscope Team please let me know when you have questions
- Bugscope Team a small field of bacteria here
- Bugscope Team most of the bacteria likely live in biofilms, which are dried out here
- Teacher So, is the bacteria usual on aquatic bugs?
Bugscope Team they are fairly common; also diatoms and other water flora/fauna
- 3:03pm
- Teacher cool. What's a diatom?
- Bugscope Team they're what diatomaceous earth are made of
- Bugscope Team when we see them in the 'scope they're just the silica shells
- Teacher k
- Bugscope Team diatoms are actually algae, and many are single-celled
- Bugscope Team this is a whole microenvironment on the head of the mayfly larva
- Teacher what's that little wormy thing? is it an itty bitty parasite? if so, what kind?
Bugscope Team most of those long things are setae, like hairs, that help the mayfly larva sense its enivronment
- Guest Is the white worm like thing coming out of the raised area actually a worm?
Bugscope Team it's a seta
- Guest But that white flat tape-worm like thing?
- Bugscope Team insects do not have skin with nerve endings in it. instead they have shells made of chitin, which is like what our fingernails are made of
- 3:09pm
- Teacher not the long things, the little white thing here
Bugscope Team I think it is also a seta, of a different shape. but there are also tiny wormlike things -- fusarum bacteria -- here, certainly
- Bugscope Team anyway, insects sense their environment using the setae that stick through the cuticle and attach to nerves beneath
- Bugscope Team setae can sense smell, hot/cold, touch, wind/water currents
- Guest what is the white thing
Bugscope Team I think it is a blade-like seta
- Teacher ok, so is that kinda instead of eyes, or instead of fingers?
Bugscope Team this dude has eyes and claws as well
Bugscope Team it's instead of having skin with nerve endings in it. and also instead of having ears and a tongue and a nose
- Teacher so a sixth sense of sorts?
Bugscope Team it takes the place of senses we have as well; the insect chemical sense is extremely well developed compared to ours; they're like spectrographs
- Teacher diddow is wondering if we could switch control to her
Bugscope Team got it!
- Bugscope Team ants, for example, do most of their communication via chemical scents
- Bugscope Team see the compound eye to the right?
- Bugscope Team haha this is awesome
- 3:14pm
- Teacher ya
- Bugscope Team you sent the coolest samples!
- Bugscope Team Cate set the stub up yesterday for us.
- Teacher thanks, that was my mom
Bugscope Team what a cool mom!
- Teacher ya
- Bugscope Team caddisfly larvae don't just live in any old stream
- Teacher no?
- Bugscope Team the water has to be pretty clean or they do not thrive
- Teacher oh, so a kinda indicator of pollution.
- Guest what are those hairllike things on the legs?
Bugscope Team more setae (hairs), also sometimes called bristles, trichae, spines
- Bugscope Team some of those setae are also for proprioception
- Teacher what's that?
- Teacher proprioception, i mean
- Bugscope Team which is self sensing -- so the insect can tell when its limb is bent or hyperextended, etc.
- Guest Are those three mouth parts?
Bugscope Team yes in the center here
- Bugscope Team insects usually have two sets of palps that help them taste and manipulate prospective food into their mouths
- Bugscope Team at the tips of some of the palps you find little tastebud-like things
- Teacher do the 3 mouth parts have different jobs?
Bugscope Team yes, but I don't know all of the functions, I'm sorry -- when they eat their mouths are moving in all directions
- 3:20pm
- Teacher how many palps are in a set?
Bugscope Team usually a set of mandibular palps (2) and maxillary palps (2)
- Teacher cool
- Bugscope Team in humans the lower jaw is the mandible and the upper jaw is the maxilla
- Bugscope Team with insects the mouth usually opens sideways compared to ours
- Teacher ok
- Bugscope Team silverfish have scales like mosquitoes, butterflies, moths, and very few other insects
- Guest are those scales?
Bugscope Team yes they are!
- Bugscope Team these scales reflect silver light, as you know
- Bugscope Team scales are also setae -- modified setae
- Bugscope Team scales do lots of things, and one of the most important is that they come off easily -- so if you have scales and fly or wander into a spider web you might leave your scales and slip out
- Guest what are the hairy tipe things
Bugscope Team more setae, yeah
- Teacher are the hairy things also setae?
Bugscope Team yes they are!
- Bugscope Team insects are much more 'hairy' than you'd expect
- Teacher i didn't know mosquitos had scales.
Bugscope Team they even have them on their proboscis, but the part that sticks in you is inside, super sharp, and smooth
- Bugscope Team this is pretty much totally awesome
- Bugscope Team it's a caddisfly with no cocoon around it
- 3:25pm
- Teacher oh joy. i'm glad their needle thing is not hairy
Bugscope Team haha. it's called a fascicle, same root as fascist
- Guest is that a hat
Bugscope Team well we can check and see
- Bugscope Team the fascicle has four stylets in it -- the cutting parts. and a siphon tube that looks like an evil calla lily
- Teacher it would b a pretty ugly hat.
Bugscope Team lots of micro sea creatures making up a most lovely hat
- Guest where is the eye? Is that it just left of the leg here?
Bugscope Team yes it is the bump we see
- Bugscope Team the caddisfly larva eyes probably do not work super well, but all of those setae warn it when food is near
- Teacher why does it hav esuch a tiny i?
Bugscope Team I am guessing, but I think it is more like a stemmata in a caterpillar, fairly primitive
- Teacher ok
- Bugscope Team the eye probably registers light and dark, like the ocelli on the top of the head of many flying insects
- 3:30pm
- Teacher ok, so the setae are the feelers/seers?
Bugscope Team yes they are -- they sense motion, vibration, hot vs cold, and also chemical scents
- Teacher did the middle leg on the right lose a segment?
- Guest the leg looks like a stick
Bugscope Team yes and they seem mostly to have single claws, whereas adult insects often have double grasping claws
- Teacher welan would like the controls now
- Teacher oh yeah, i see those.
- Guest What is the purpose of the protuberences that look like arm buds just below the lower legs? Do they hold it's body inside it's shell?
Bugscope Team that is a good guess. I am not sure, but some of those are likely not part of the insect -- they're water creatures like hydra, vorticella, etc.
- Teacher i dunno...
- Bugscope Team sometimes we see lots of similar short bulbous features, and they are actually gills
- Bugscope Team even though we critical point dried these larvae, the abdomen is soft and often shrivels a bit
- Teacher are the wrinkles 4 friction so the body doesn't come out of the shell?
Bugscope Team when the insect is alive they are probably not so shrunken/shriveled like they are now
- Teacher ok
- 3:35pm
- Bugscope Team but you can see lots of threadlike structures that probably, as Welan said, help secure the insect inside the cocoon.
- Guest the wrinkles look like leavs!
Bugscope Team yes they do!
- Guest is that the tail?
Bugscope Team yes it is
- Bugscope Team this is how it holds onto the substrate so it doesn't get blown all around
- Teacher is the bottom of the caddisfly case open so the tail can latch onto rocks?
- Bugscope Team let's look at the one with the case and see
- Teacher cause it looks like the thing on a caterpillar that does that.
- Bugscope Team here we see the caddisfly larvae in its stone cocoon
- Guest can welan have the controls!!!
- Bugscope Team Welan has control
- Teacher diddow mean to say plkease
- Teacher thanx
- Guest thank you
- Bugscope Team this is a plant stem
- Guest thanks
- Teacher huh. i guess it's a mystery.
- 3:40pm
- Teacher why are we zoomed up on it?
Bugscope Team I wanted to ensure that we could see what it was
- Bugscope Team this is the moth compound eye
- Teacher whoa!
- Bugscope Team when I made the preset it looked good, but by the time we drove over to look at it, it was charging up with electrons
- Bugscope Team moths are very hard to coat adequately with gold-palladium to make them conductive
- Teacher is there any particular reason for the hexagonal shape? and how is it so perfect?
Bugscope Team if you take round things and stack them, like oranges at a market, hexagonal is the best way to go. in nature you are stacking round eye facets into a dome shape, and hexagonal works best
- Guest can moths see well?
Bugscope Team yes they can. often they can see UV light, which we cannot
- Teacher okay, coolio.
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes like this it would be hard to buy sunglasses
- Guest this is realy cool
- Bugscope Team but if you had compound eyes you would not have to turn your head as far to see all around you
- Teacher i meant moth, not fly. sorry
- 3:46pm
- Teacher so if you ask a fly what color the sky is they'll say ultraviolet?
Bugscope Team some colors show up better than others for insects, but some flowers, for example, fluoresce in the UV, and that attracts the insects they need to move pollen around
- Teacher the only thing that would make this cooler is if the images were in color. is there any reason it's not?
- Bugscope Team in the center we see the proboscis, which rolls up into a coil when it is not being used
- Bugscope Team when the moth wants to extend its proboscis into a flower, it pumps hemolymph into it the same way you would blow into a party favor to extend it at New Years
- Teacher do we know how long the average proboscis is?
Bugscope Team I don't know, but we can see that this one is likely at least 5 mm
- Teacher ok
- Guest is that long toob thing the tong
Bugscope Team the one to the right is one of the palps, stripped of setae
- Bugscope Team the coiled thing is the tongue -- the proboscis
- Bugscope Team it's like a straw
- Bugscope Team the white things that are charging up with electrons in the back are the antennae
- Bugscope Team the white thing that is flaring up to the right of the compound eye is a palp
- 3:51pm
- Bugscope Team this is one of the vorticella like creatures, like a sea squirt
- Guest that looks like a bat!!
- Teacher why are they twisted looking like a screw? thew antennae?
Bugscope Team I think that may have been a male. They have more ornate antennae, and they are better able to sense pheromones in the air from female moths
- Teacher parasite or benefactor of a symbiotic relationship?
Bugscope Team I think likely symbiotic
- Bugscope Team the tiny rock like things at the base, to the right, are diatoms
- Guest what is that?
- Teacher cool. how do they each benefit?
Bugscope Team the sea squirt can live on the larva, or on its cocoon, but I am not sure how that would benefit the caddisfly larva
- Guest is that an animal
Bugscope Team I think this is kind of like a sponge
- Bugscope Team a coelenterate
- Teacher wazzat?
- Bugscope Team oops coelenterates are no longer valid
- 3:57pm
- Teacher hah
Bugscope Team oh man
- Guest that looks like a chickin!!
- Bugscope Team haha yeah
- Guest it looks like a seed pod
Bugscope Team some of these features are so specialized, and we often see things we do not recognize
- Guest are thoes bones?
Bugscope Team insects have exoskeletons, but they really do not have bones, of course
- 4:02pm
- Teacher why are there ripple looking things?
Bugscope Team probably the eyes are a bit dessicated since the moth died. we see nano-sized features on these ommatidia.
- Teacher coolio
- Guest that is cool!!!
- Guest this is so cool!!!!!!!
- Bugscope Team those are hard to get good images of at this working distance, but they are about 100 nm in diameter
- Teacher THIS IS THE COOLEST!!!!!!!!!!!
- Teacher i beat you guys. ha.
- Guest this is super!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Bugscope Team that is, they are smaller than the wavelengths of visible or even UV light
- Guest this is
- Bugscope Team you can see where we made a TV shaped mark on the eye
- Guest sorry!
- Bugscope Team I always think of these as comparable to rods/cones in a human eye
- Bugscope Team for collecting light
- Guest coolllll
- 4:07pm
- Bugscope Team on the eye? or where we are now?
- Teacher thanks so much for answering our questions!
- Teacher bye scott
- Guest thank you so much!!!!!!!!
- Guest that looks coooooooool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Guest what are those things that look like spotts??????????????????????
Bugscope Team I am not sure, really, but the spots on the eye likely form a kind of light guide
- Bugscope Team this is a diatom
- Bugscope Team if you Google them up you can see that they come in lots of shapes
- Bugscope Team it's a silica-shelled unicellular alga
- Teacher Thank you so much Scott for this wonderful experience. We are done for today. Everyone was fascinated by the images and learned so much.
- Guest Thank you so much for offering this wonderful program. As the mom looking over my daughter's shoulder, this has been just captivating to observe.
Bugscope Team this is really fun for us
- Bugscope Team Thank you for connecting today and for sending such cool samples.
- Bugscope Team See you next time.
- Guest thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2012-005
- Bugscope Team that is your member page...
- Teacher Bye Scott! We love BugScope!
Bugscope Team Bye!
- Bugscope Team Tha nk You.
- 4:12pm
- Bugscope Team Over and out!
