Connected on 2012-09-06 09:15:00 from Tillman, Oklahoma, United States
- 9:02am
- Teacher hello
- Bugscope Team hi!
- Bugscope Team we are working on presets and will be ready shortly
- Teacher ok thank you
- 9:08am
- 9:16am
- Bugscope Team ok we are ready when you are!
- Bugscope Team hi!
- Teacher ok
- Teacher Hi
- Teacher why would it have mold spores on its mouth?
- Bugscope Team a few of the insects today have some mold on them. Most often it's from sitting in a moist environment. Same reason why people usually have dehumidifiers in their basements
- Bugscope Team try to keep the mold from growing
- Bugscope Team the insects are all sitting on an aluminum disk that is covered with double stick carbon tape. We 'glue' the insects to the tape with the help of silver paint, and then we cover everything with a thin layer of metal to make everything conductive
- Bugscope Team the round lighter part in the lower right corner is some silver paint
- Bugscope Team feel free to select a preset on the left by clicking the left arrow and clicking one
- 9:21am
- Teacher what is the carbon tape used for
Bugscope Team the carbon tape and the silver paint helps ground any excess charge from the electron beam
- Teacher why is the spider so hairy
Bugscope Team it helps the spiders feel what's going on around it in their environment. Spiders are extra hairy compared to most insects to help them be better hunters. A lot of the time the hairs will help them feel vibrations on their web or through the ground
- Teacher do they do something special?
- Bugscope Team some hairs are also chemosensory, allowing them to smell or taste
- Teacher why are there longer spiky hairs in with the shorter hairs?
Bugscope Team the longer, larger spikes are for feeling things around it, like if they bumped their leg into something.
- Bugscope Team hairs on arthropods are supposed to be called setae, since they aren't mammals.
- Teacher what is this part?
Bugscope Team they are called chelicerae. They are the parts the fangs are attached to. They move the fangs around
- 9:26am
- Bugscope Team the fangs are just south
- Teacher (the fangs_
- Teacher are they lying flat right now?
Bugscope Team yes, they are a little hidden, but the ends are going into a dry, caked area
- Bugscope Team spiders like to drink their food so they bite their prey and inject them with a solvent that turns their insides to goo and then they drink out the goo
- Teacher what are hamuli?
Bugscope Team hamuli are hooks that hook together the hind- and forewings
- Bugscope Team this allows the bees to fly like it's one pair of wings instead of two. Then when they land on something, they unhook the hamuli and fold their wings in to be more compact
- 9:31am
- Bugscope Team sadly I couldn't find any pollen on her
- Bugscope Team so you can see the mandibles in the middle. They are hinged where they open like a gate
- Teacher what are the flaps over the bees mouth parts? They don't have fangs do they?
Bugscope Team bee jaws. No fangs. They can bite with them, though
- Teacher the antennae look almost translucent. Is that because of the microscope projection?
Bugscope Team That's mostly because they are charging up with excess electrons. The electrons aren't going to ground so easily there
- 9:36am
- Bugscope Team this roly poly has a bit of mold on it too
- Bugscope Team they aren't insects they are crustacians like crabs/lobsters
- Teacher is this the mold under his shell type exoskeleton?
Bugscope Team yes it is!
- Teacher he looks dirtier than the other insects.
- Bugscope Team there are also a few stray scales from some other insect, maybe a moth
- Teacher where are his eyes?
Bugscope Team they aren't visible but you are looking in the right area
- Bugscope Team they are usually found on the outside part of the shell next to where the antenna usually curves around
- Teacher so are they ever visible?
Bugscope Team they are, but this extra dirty specimen makes things more difficult
- 9:41am
- Bugscope Team so these special setae help manipulate the spider silk
- Bugscope Team like knitting needles?
- Teacher what is the big bump on the top setae?
Bugscope Team some type of juju. A piece of dust/dirt or maybe some dried bug blood. Not sure
- Bugscope Team this is special salt we only found at wendy's
- Bugscope Team And they don't even carry it anymore. They have more regular salt now.
- Teacher Is it not typical NaCl?
- Teacher so why would salt from Wendy's be different from normal salt?
Bugscope Team this salt is very cool becuase of it's cubic aztec nature. It is still NaCl, but it has some anticaking agent in it to make it look like this
- Teacher would that be to make it not stick?
Bugscope Team that's right.
- 9:47am
- Bugscope Team these are ommatidia (which are the individual facets) of the compound eye on a crane fly
- Bugscope Team they are a little dried out right now, When the flies are alive, the ommatidia would look a little more plump
- Teacher do they see different images or work together
Bugscope Team they see parts of the picture that usually overlap with what neighboring facets are seeing. The images are sent to the brain where they assemble into a full picture. A little bit like how our eyes work
- Teacher that's neat
- Bugscope Team here are some pretty looking mold
- Teacher is it on anything in particular or just a sample of mold?
Bugscope Team just a sample. It is all gathered like a bouquet of flowers
- Bugscope Team not something i would want around my house in a vase
- Teacher me either. :)
- Teacher We are switching classes right now so in just a few minutes I will have my BIO II students in the room.
- Teacher They will take a look for the remainder of our time.
- 9:52am
- Bugscope Team sure. Sounds like fun!
- Bugscope Team sometimes when insects die, they vomit a little bit, which is most likely the dried cracked area you might see near the middle where the fangs are curving inward
- Teacher ugh.
- Teacher what is that little hook on the compound eye
Bugscope Team it's a tiny seta (hair) that helps feel the direction of the air currents
- Teacher they would like to know if they blink
Bugscope Team no they don't blink. The way they clear stuff from their eyes is rubbing their forelegs over them. You might have seen a fly do this before when it lands
- 9:57am
- Teacher what kind of spider is this?
Bugscope Team not sure. We aren't very good at figuring out most species unless they have some identifying mark on them, like the black widow. This may be a small wolf spider or just a house spider
- Bugscope Team now we are looking at the spider's fangs, where they meet
- Bugscope Team at the bottom of the image
- Bugscope Team helllo Dragonfly!
- Teacher :)
- Teacher they would like to know if you can train a spider to jump.
Bugscope Team I am not sure I would want to try. They can do that by themselves, and some of them specialize in jumping
- Bugscope Team you might be able to but it could be like teaching a cat to jump. Tarantulas might be easier to try it on since they are bigger
- Bugscope Team tarantulas are often large and heavy, and if they were to jump and fall they might break open
- Bugscope Team this is cool!
- 10:03am
- Bugscope Team you can see one of the spider's claws, and around it you see lots of 'plumose' setae
- Teacher where would spiders have claws and what do they use them for?
Bugscope Team their claws are right at the tip of each of their eight legs, and they use them to walk along their webs, for example
- Teacher that's awesome
- Bugscope Team spiders can make sticky and nonsticky web, and if they were to get caught in their own web, they could in some cases eat their way out of it
- Bugscope Team spiders are good recyclers and can eat their webs at the end of an evening
- Bugscope Team now you see the honetybee's head, with its mandibles crossed in front of its mouth
- Teacher why do they make their webs over each night (orb spiders)
Bugscope Team webs can take a beating, from wind and from birds and large insects, and from animals walking into them; they can also get coated with insects, making it easy for other insects to see that they might not want to fly in that direction
- Bugscope Team oops 'honeybee'
- Teacher like down syndrome type issues?
- Bugscope Team see the compound eyes on either side of the head, and the immense number of hairs (setae) between the eyes?
- 10:08am
- Teacher do insects often have genetic abnormalities
Bugscope Team they can. There's something they get where their wings aren't well formed
- Bugscope Team you can also see that the jaws (mandibles) open from side to side, like a gate
- Bugscope Team yes there can be a number of genetic abnormalities; chemicals in the air or in water can cause problems with development as well]
- Bugscope Team apparently it's just called deformed wing virus
- Bugscope Team thought to be spread from varroa mites
- Bugscope Team just this week a number of papers came out about how the DNA we always thought of as dormant actually has specific effects on the DNA that forms genes
- Teacher do flies clean themselves like other animals do?
Bugscope Team yes they do!
- Bugscope Team this earwig must have been a messy eater
- Teacher Ha, we just said he looks like he has a cigar hanging out of his mouth.
- Teacher how?
Bugscope Team one thing we see often, of course, is when they use their forelimbs to wipe their faces
- Bugscope Team ants actually have built-in combs on a forelimb joint that they use to clean their antennae
- 10:13am
- Teacher that's neat, I never thought about the little setae on the back of the legs as combs
- Bugscope Team they really do resemble tiny combs, and they are circular and in halves so that they can close around the antennae
- Bugscope Team some of the setae we see on insects are used for proprioception, which is self-sensing
- Bugscope Team for example, an insect can sense when a particular limb is overextended when it bends far enough to touch setae around it
- Bugscope Team depends on the spider and the conditions it's living in. Like if it's in a home, then the spider might have its web destroyed by humans so it has to keep rebuilding it
- Teacher they would like to know if you know how many webs a spider might make in its lifetime (on average)
Bugscope Team we would say, of course, that it can vary, but if a spider lives two years in a temperate zone or in the tropics, it could make perhaps 700 webs over that time period it can make
- 10:18am
- Teacher thank you all so much, we have really enjoyed this!
Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2012-031 is where you can access your chat and images from today
- Teacher We may try to sign up for a time in the Spring so I can have another class experience it. Thanks again.
- Bugscope Team Please be sure to sign up soon for a time that may be months away....
- Bugscope Team we have been overwhelmed, at times, with applications
- Bugscope Team once you get a time scheduled, we can almost always make modifications to the time and day
- Bugscope Team it's kind of dim right now but the samples are sitting in the middle
- Bugscope Team Dragonfly are you still on?
- 10:23am
- Guest I was just peeking. Didn't want to interfere with the class.
Bugscope Team let us know if you have questions or would like to drive -- I believe the class is finished
- Guest Really cool stuff!
Bugscope Team Thank You! We are lucky to be able to do this.
- Guest Wow!
- Guest I thought the spider claw was really cool!
- Bugscope Team Cate just took us back to the secondary electron detector, and we are looking at a mite on the abdomen of an earwig
- Bugscope Team if you want, you can change the mag, select from the presets, drive a bit
- Guest I am a naturalist in Indianapolis. What are the hair like projections in between the segments
- Bugscope Team they are for feeling movement when the abdomen bends, most likely
- Guest Amazing! Thanks, I will have to check another one of your sessions out. Thank you so much for your time!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team See you another time, Dragonfly.
- Bugscope Team hi skress. we are just now shutting down the session
- 10:28am
- Bugscope Team yes skress, we are sorry
- Bugscope Team feel free to jump in a future session if you want to see Bugscope in action
Bugscope Team yes, please
