Connected on 2012-04-17 16:00:00 from Contra Costa, California, United States
- 3:01pm
- Bugscope Team sample is pumping down...
- 3:17pm
- Bugscope Team we will start making presets in just a few minutes
- Bugscope Team we're waiting for the vacuum to get just a bit better
- 3:23pm
- 3:28pm
- 3:33pm
- Bugscope Team hello Bear!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team we are making a few more presets before your session starts
- Bugscope Team this is a silverfish
- Bugscope Team please let us drive for a bit longer
- Bugscope Team can you see this?
- 3:39pm
- 3:44pm
- Bugscope Team okay we are ready to roll!
- Bugscope Team please feel free to take control and drive around your sample
- 3:50pm
- Bugscope Team Hi Joe!
- Bugscope Team Did the software reject your name?
- Guest Entomologist Hey, yea it says i'm still logged in as Joe
- Guest Entomologist or something
- Bugscope Team you could see today that we are working to get you and Linnea set up as admins
- Bugscope Team it's done the same thing to me before
- Guest Entomologist Yea, I'll come up to talk with alex tomorrow
- Teacher Hello!
Bugscope Team Hello Bear! Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team this is some kind of small bee
- Bugscope Team its head is tilted back a bit so we see its mandibles up top
- Teacher Thanks ! I need to pick up the kids from recess be right back. This is a first grade class, so we will probably have more general questions
Bugscope Team hey no problem this should be fun
- 4:00pm
- Teacher ok we are here. Can you please describe what we are looking at?
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a small bee. you can see that it is very hairy, and you can see, especially on the right, its compound eyes
- Bugscope Team compound eyes have many lenses -- many facets -- that are called ommatidia
- Teacher What are compound eyes?
Bugscope Team there are simple eyes, called ocelli, that mostly just register light and help the insect keep oriented with the sun so it does not get lost. Compound eyes are what the insect uses to see.
- Teacher How does that affect the bee's vision?
Bugscope Team the many facets help the bee see movement better. they can also see in blues. greens, and ultraviolet
- Guest Entomologist But their vision is more pixelated, and at a much lower resolution that what we see
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes you would have better peripheral vision -- you would be able to see much more of what is around you, so you wouldn't have to turn your head as much
- Teacher Do bees have teeth?
Bugscope Team no but they have jaws that you can see to the left\
- 4:06pm
- Bugscope Team the things that resemble teeth here are the covering to the glossa -- to the bee's tongue
- Guest Entomologist the bees use nectar from flowers (which is a sugar solution of sorts), they take that in, and hold it in their nectar stomach, as that is mixed with various enzymes and things, honey is made.
- Teacher The kids want to know how bees make honey?
Bugscope Team honey comes from the nectar the bees collect as they visit flowers. but it is not just nectar; the bees process it, as Joee said.
- Guest Entomologist they're probably hairy for sensory and thermoregulation
- Guest Entomologist *keeping warm
- Guest Entomologist *the hairs help them feel the environment around them.
- Teacher awesome!
- Teacher Also, why are the bees hairy?
Bugscope Team bees and other insects have hairs on them called setae. The hairs tell the insect when things are touching them. They can't feel things through their hard exoskeletons (which is similar to you wearing a suit of armor), so they have hairs to help give them information
- Bugscope Team insects no have skin, like we do. instead, they have a kind of shell that is called an exoskeleton
- Bugscope Team oops
- Bugscope Team insects do not have skin, I should have said
- 4:12pm
- Teacher also, what do bees eat?
Bugscope Team they eat nectar and honey
- Teacher How does the bee eat?
Bugscope Team it uses its tongue to suck up nectar and put it in its 'honey stomach,' which is separate from the stomach it uses to digest food. when it is hungry, however, there is a valve from the honey stomach to the digestive stomach that lets it feed itself from the honey stomach
- Teacher Very cool. Moving on to the ant
- Guest Entomologist they also eat pollen
- Bugscope Team in the wintertime some beekeepers feed their bees high-fructose corn syrup; that seems to be a major cause of colony collapse disorder
- Guest Entomologist lots of pollen (protein)
- Bugscope Team this is a large ant
- Bugscope Team you can see its mandibles (jaws) very clearly. they open from side to side like a gate. not like our jaws, which open up and down
- Bugscope Team you can also see the ant's antennae, and you can barely see one of its compound eyes, to the right below the antenna
- Guest Entomologist a genus of ants known as the trapjaw ants have one of the fastest moving parts (its mandibles) known in animals
- Bugscope Team in the foreground we see the ant's knee, one of six knees since it has six legs
- 4:17pm
- Bugscope Team ants do most of their communication using chemical signals, and the antennae pick up those signals
- Bugscope Team now you can see the compound eye -- the low 'dome' -- very well
- Teacher what is a low dome ?
- Teacher is that what the antennae is for?
Bugscope Team yes that's right
- Bugscope Team you are doing a good job driving
- Teacher Thanks I was nervous!
- Bugscope Team the antennae have lots of chemoreceptors on them that process the chemical signals
- Bugscope Team if an ant smells dead, the worker ants that clean up the trash will throw it away even if it is moving
- Guest Entomologist I think Scot was referring to the apparent shape of the eye as 'dome' shaped.
- Teacher Ah makes sense
- Bugscope Team someone did an experiment in which they took the dead ant smell and rubbed it on a live ant; the other ants treated the live ant like it was dead
- Bugscope Team now we can what the cuticle looks like up close
- Teacher so different ants have different jobs?
Bugscope Team yes and they come in different sizes and different shapes, to some extent, depending on what their job is
- Bugscope Team this is a much smaller ant]
- 4:22pm
- Bugscope Team you can see its mandibles, and you can see that it compound eye has many fewer facets
- Guest Entomologist yup, this also depends on the species of ants, some ants like the big headed ants have more than one size caste
- Bugscope Team the ant does not only have brains in its head; often there also also a lot of muscles to power the jaws
- Bugscope Team almost all of the ants we see are female
- Guest Entomologist the larger ones are usually responsible to seed/large food mashing/defense, and the smaller ones do most of the other general tasks, although some tasks can overlap
- Bugscope Team male ants have wings, and the only other ant that has wings, for awhile, is the queen
- Guest Entomologist the males only mate and don't work
- Teacher why female?
Bugscope Team um because males are useless and lazy
- Guest Entomologist they're a lazy bunch, they also take up resources
- Teacher hahaha!
- Bugscope Team I am joking, a little...
- Guest Entomologist this is also true in most social insects
- Guest Entomologist bees, wasps, etc...
- Teacher T
- Bugscope Team the male ants fly out to breed with a queen from another faraway colony; when they get back the ants in their own nest will not let them in
- Guest Entomologist males are born from unfertilized eggs
- Teacher so the female ants do more of the work, and the males take up more resources? What does this remind me of ? :)
Bugscope Team cannot imagine anything like that in humans
- Guest Entomologist and a lot of times, after mating are actually kicked out of the nests
- Teacher oops the class wants to know how can ants be so strong?
Bugscope Team they probably have better innervation of their muscles, per their size, than most of us do
- 4:28pm
- Bugscope Team so they can call on more energy at one time than we normally can
- Bugscope Team this is a female housefly
- Bugscope Team its eyes are to the sides of its head -- we can see that it has compound eyes with thousands of facets
- Guest Entomologist it has something to do with ratio of their mass and the mass that is muscles
- Bugscope Team in the middle, top, of the head, we see the bases of the antennae. the antennae are broken off, however. certainly after the fly died
- Teacher The eyes seem very large, can they see well?
Bugscope Team yes they can see fairly well. often flying insects have much more complex and better eyes than insects that do not fly
- Bugscope Team the larger hairs -- the bristles -- that we see are kind of like cat or rat whiskers
- Guest Entomologist they can see movement very well. and they almost have a 360 vision
- Guest Entomologist probably so they can avoid predators
Bugscope Team it makes them hard to sawt
- Teacher Why is that? To help them navigate?
Bugscope Team they need to be able to see as well as they can fly. if they aren't careful they will fly into things and not survive long.
- Bugscope Team swat
- 4:33pm
- Teacher Is this the mouth area?
Bugscope Team yes it is!
- Teacher What are the spikes?
Bugscope Team the spikes help the fly feel when it is touching its food
- Bugscope Team the background with the bubbles is carbon tape. i use it to stick the critters on
- Teacher I don't think I've heard of a true bug. Is there another nickname?
- Guest Entomologist hmm
- Bugscope Team this is a shield bug which is a type of true bug
- Guest Entomologist i don't know of another nickname
- Bugscope Team you may think they are some sort of beetle but they aren't. They have a long proboscis they use to drink liquids with
- Guest Entomologist but cicadas, leafhoppers, aphids all fall under true bugs
- Guest Entomologist yup. most true bugs can fly
- Teacher Does it fly? Also, what are these bubble like things?
Bugscope Team yes it can fly. The bubble things here are pores where different looking setae are
- 4:39pm
- Teacher What are setae again?
Bugscope Team they are insect hairs
- Guest Entomologist That's it's proboscis
- Guest Entomologist *its
- Guest Entomologist it's a modified mouth part for sucking up plant juices, insect hemolymph and sometimes blood
- Teacher like a straw. Does a shield bug drink human blood?
- Teacher Does it have a heart and brain?
- Teacher Are they poisonous?
- Guest Entomologist no. most shield bugs feed on plants, some prey on other insects
- Guest Entomologist they have a brain, but no heart
- Guest Entomologist they are not poisonous.
- 4:44pm
- Guest Entomologist yup. beetles are insects
- Teacher Is a beetle an insect?
Bugscope Team yes it is.
- Teacher What do they eat?
- Guest Entomologist *at least not a heart, in the mammalian sense
- Guest Entomologist beetles eat a diversity of things, carpet beetles munch on your carpet, and various dead tissue
- Guest Entomologist some beetles are detritivorous, so they break down deacying matter like roadkill, etc
- Bugscope Team now you can see the beetle's mandibles, and you can also see two of its palps
- Guest Entomologist many of them are plant feeding, the asian longhorned beetle, and emerald ash borers both bore into trees
- Teacher What is the spine looking thing down the middle?
Bugscope Team i think you are referring to the palp. There are 2 of them here. The palps help the beetle taste or move around food
- Bugscope Team many insects have four palps much like that, and they function as accessory mouthparts
- Guest Entomologist some beetles feed on other insects
- Teacher What are the cone shaped things? Do they eat with these? Do they have mandibles like the ant?
Bugscope Team those are two of the palps, and at their tips they have sensors that taste food, like taste buds on your tongue
- Bugscope Team the mandibles are the flat pokey parts that meet near the upper left to middle of the screen
- Bugscope Team oh and yes they have mandibles like the ant
- Bugscope Team the mandibles look like forks, or sporks\
- Teacher The bell is about to ring and we are out of time! Thank you soooo much this was as great experience. The kids say AWESOME! and THANKS!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- 4:49pm
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2012-029
- Guest Entomologist no problem! thank you!
- Bugscope Team copied below is a link to your member page
- Bugscope Team thanks for joining us this afternoon!
- Bugscope Team Thank you, Joe!
- Bugscope Team yes thank you Joe for helping out
- Guest Entomologist np later!
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Bugscope Team bye
