Connected on 2012-10-12 14:00:00 from El Paso, Colorado, United States
- 12:54pm
- Bugscope Team Hi Mr D!
- Bugscope Team sample is in 'scope and pumping down
- Bugscope Team this is a CCD camera view of the vacuum chamber
- 1:20pm
- Bugscope Team now we're making presets for today's session
- 1:26pm
- 1:34pm
- 1:41pm
- 1:47pm
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Teacher Hello, we are here!
- Bugscope Team Welcome back to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team this is a mite on a female earwig, in the 'shoulder' region
- Teacher What is that showing now?
- Bugscope Team that is a mite on the earwig
- 1:53pm
- Bugscope Team this one is totally mangled
- Teacher Are those pinchers?
Bugscope Team yes those are called cercopods, also
- Bugscope Team those of the males are curved, and those of females are relatively straight
- Teacher What type of spider?
Bugscope Team this is one you sent, maybe a wolf spider?
- Bugscope Team it's a boy
- Teacher What is sticking out from the hairs?
- Teacher Ladybug?
Bugscope Team close!
- 1:58pm
- Bugscope Team this is a Japanese beetle
- Bugscope Team you can compare it to the ladybug, which is among the presets
- Bugscope Team would you like to drive now?
- Teacher Sure, what do we do?
- Bugscope Team you can click on any of the presets on the lefthand screen, and the 'scope will drive to that place
- Bugscope Team you can also change the mag, focus, contrast/brightness, and use click to center on the image to actually drive
- Bugscope Team it looks like the 'net is slow...
- 2:03pm
- Bugscope Team I'm going to stop and start the server in a minute; it should not cause a problem for you
- Teacher What are we looking at?
Bugscope Team this is one of the lamellar antennae -- the lobed antenna -- on the Japanese beetle
- Bugscope Team the lamellae can fold open like a fan
- Bugscope Team most of the placoid sensilla we barely see, in that crack, are likely chemosensory
- Bugscope Team sensillae..
- Teacher We can't seem to get another picture
Bugscope Team ha yeah I couldn't either
- 2:08pm
- Bugscope Team I think it will work now.
- Teacher Ant?
- Bugscope Team yes this is a nice one you sent
- Bugscope Team you can see its antennae, its mandibles, some tarsi, and the compound eye on one side
- Teacher Is it the red ant?
Bugscope Team yes it is!
- Bugscope Team Greg please try driving now, or changing mag or something.
- Bugscope Team almost every ant we see is female
- Bugscope Team when we see an ant with wings it is either a queen or a male
- Bugscope Team whoops I just messed you up
- Bugscope Team these are scales from the hawk moth
- Bugscope Team butterflies, moths, mosquitoes, silverfish, and very few other insects have scales
- Bugscope Team scales provide color, both from pigment and from their structure
- Bugscope Team scales also seem to function like feathers do for a bird
- Bugscope Team and one important thing they do is fall out fairly easily, so if the insect flies into a web, it can leave its scales and slip out, sometimes
- 2:13pm
- Bugscope Team this is the other spider you sent
- Teacher spider?
Bugscope Team yes it is!
- Bugscope Team you can see its fangs, in the middle
- Bugscope Team they are sort of facing each other, and they come out of the long chelicers, or chelicerae
- Teacher kind?
Bugscope Team I am sorry I am not good with spider ID. It's probably a house spider.
- Bugscope Team when we get spiders, because they have soft bodies, they are often shriveled, and it is hard to ID them
- Bugscope Team this is a true bug -- a hemipteran
- Bugscope Team its antennae and its legs broke off
- Teacher what is the hole?
- Bugscope Team but you can see its proboscis -- its piercing/sucking mouthparts that are one sign that it is a hemipteran
- Bugscope Team on either side of the proboscis we see holes where the antennae had broken off
- Bugscope Team you can also see, very well, the compound eyes
- 2:18pm
- Bugscope Team the individual facets of the compound eyes are called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team each is an individual lens
- Bugscope Team because of their dome-like shape, the bug can see a lot of the area around it at one time, without moving its head
- Teacher palp?
Bugscope Team yes!
- Bugscope Team yes that is a ladybug palp
- Bugscope Team like a vacuum cleaner nozzle
- Bugscope Team you can see the ladybug's compound eye to the left
- Teacher what is a palp?
Bugscope Team a palp is an accessory mouthpart, like a feeler, that helps the insect taste and also manipulate its food
- Bugscope Team there are mandibular and maxillary palps
- Teacher how old are these
- Bugscope Team the moths?
- 2:24pm
- Teacher yes
- Bugscope Team this is likely 5 or 6 weeks old
- Teacher Is this the powdery stuff that comes off their wings when you touch them?
- Bugscope Team we are looking at a single scale -- scales are what seem like powder to us when we stroke a moth's wing
- Bugscope Team the scales often have pigment in those little holes in the lattice
- Bugscope Team the shape of the lattice, with its ridges and crossbars, refracts light in different colors
- Bugscope Team ah ha!
- Bugscope Team this I believe is also a male spider
- Bugscope Team spiders have something called palps as well -- pedipalps
- Bugscope Team the males have swollen palps that look like boxing gloves, whereas those of females are smaller and not as bulbous
- Bugscope Team female spiders are often larger, however; sometimes much larger
- 2:30pm
- Bugscope Team when a male spider wants to get close to a female spider, sometimes it wads up some web and places it right over the division between the two chelicerae so the female cannot spread her fangs and bite
- Teacher what kind
Bugscope Team this is a small house spider
- Teacher how old is it?
- Bugscope Team this one is probably a month old
- Bugscope Team spiders can go for a long time without eating
- Bugscope Team when they do eat, they use their fangs to inject venom into their prey. the venom dissolves the inner organs of the prey, and the spider sucks it all up like a milkshake
- Bugscope Team these little sharp things are kind of like a soft brush -- they are part of the pulvillus of the ladybug and help the ladybug cling to surfaces -- like walls and ceilings
- Teacher what is this?
- Bugscope Team those are tenent setae
- Bugscope Team setae are what we call hairs in the insect world
- Bugscope Team and tenent means, from Latin tenir, or like Spanish tener, to hold
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down you can see where we are now
- Bugscope Team this is one of the antennae from the hawk moth you sent
- Bugscope Team I believe, because it is ornate, this is a male moth
- 2:35pm
- Bugscope Team female moths and also mosquitoes have less fancy antennae
- Bugscope Team males have ornate/fancy antennae because they often need more chemosensory setae or sensillae in order to follow the pheromone trails of the females
- Teacher why is the top different?
Bugscope Team it just has scales on it; that is I believe the back side of the antenna, and the side with the sensory setae is the front
- Bugscope Team one of the primary purposes of scales, according the entomologists, is to protect their bearer from getting caught in a spider web
- Bugscope Team so the scales would be on an outer-facing surface of the antennae
- Bugscope Team this is really cool
- Bugscope Team it is a bit hard to see, but each of the claws, on either side, has two tips
- Bugscope Team that is, it helps the moth cling to surfaces
- 2:40pm
- Bugscope Team all of the 'shingles' in the background are scales
- Bugscope Team this is a mite, living on the body of an earwig
- Bugscope Team the mite is quite small, maybe 250 micrometers long, which is a quarter of a millimeter
- Bugscope Team because I am sitting at the microscope -- the SEM -- I can drive a bit for us
- Teacher hard shell?
Bugscope Team it is fairly hard -- it is probably made of chitin like the cuticle of an insect or like the elytra -- the shell -- of a ladybug
- Bugscope Team we are looking at the legs/arms, and the head is there too but we cannot identify it clearly
- 2:45pm
- Bugscope Team this is 5000 times magnified
- Bugscope Team now 10,000x
- Bugscope Team with a light microscope, generally you cannot go above 1250x
- Bugscope Team the mite has long legs with sucker feet at the ends
- Bugscope Team the thing that looks like a leaf is one of those feet
- Teacher scales/
Bugscope Team yes the foot looks very much like a moth or butterfly scale
- Bugscope Team this is 20,000 times magnified
- Bugscope Team this is the small moth you had sent that looked like it was camoflaged in green and gray
- Bugscope Team you can see its compound eyes, and it is covered with scales, almost like it has a fur coat
- Bugscope Team in the center we see its tongue -- its proboscis -- which is coiled up when it is not being used
- 2:50pm
- Bugscope Team moths and butterflies have coiled tongues like this that they can extend to reach deep into flowers to get the nectar
- Bugscope Team moths can often see in the ultraviolet wavelengths of light. they can see things we do not see unless we are using a blacklight.
- Bugscope Team flowers can have colors that are in the ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths to attract insects that can see in those wavelengths
- Bugscope Team when the flowers attract insects, the insects pick up pollen and move it to other flowers so that cross-pollination occurs
- Teacher is a proboscus made out of the same material as ours?
Bugscope Team
Bugscope Team oops
Bugscope Team it is made of chitin, the same as what the exoskeleton of the insect is made of, or like a shrimp shell. our fingernails are made of something similar
- Teacher We have to go now, thank you so much!
- Bugscope Team awwww...
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2012-062
- Bugscope Team Thank you for connecting with us today!
