Session 2012-106 with Jose Marti MAST Academy

Application

The School

The Class

The Project

Miscellaneous

Live Session Transcript

Connected on 2013-03-14 08:30:00 from Miami-Dade, Florida, United States

• 7:29am
• Bugscope Team sample is in chamber, pumping down
• 7:36am
• Bugscope Team almost ready to start making presets

• 7:43am

• 7:49am

• Bugscope Team good morning, Jose!
• Bugscope Team we're working on the presets
• 7:54am

• 8:00am

• Bugscope Team back in a minute
• Teacher good morning, cold here...50s!
• 8:08am
• Bugscope Team 25 here
• Bugscope Team couple more places to go on the stub and I'm done

• 8:15am

• 8:21am

• Bugscope Team Jose we are ready any time now
• Bugscope Team we can look for a few more presets but as soon as you're ready we're ready

• 8:29am
• Teacher 2 more minutes
• Bugscope Team you can see that the proboscis points straight down, and here you can see three stylets coming out of it
• Bugscope Team pretty cool

• Teacher what insect are we on?
• Bugscope Team this is an aphid

• Bugscope Team super small and softbodied

• Bugscope Team these must have been critical point dried or they would not look nearly this good
• Bugscope Team you can see that they are all high-performance, with dual exhausts

• Teacher our internet is slow today, they just appeared
• 8:34am
• Bugscope Team the cornicles, or siphuncles, produce this stuff like hot-melt glue that can flow over an ant and immobilize it

• Bugscope Team some ants farm aphids and most ants attack them
• Bugscope Team ladybugs like to eat them

• Bugscope Team maybe it would help the speed if you clicked on "switch to video" near the top of the window
• Bugscope Team I believe that the aphids that are farmed produce nectar from the cornicles that feeds the ants

• Bugscope Team Jose you can click on any of the presets, to the left, as well
• Bugscope Team the field of view is a tiny bit more than a millimeter long
• Teacher a student wanted to see if they head the pores like the beetle in the stem video
• Bugscope Team you mean spiracles?
• Teacher I don't see a video button
• Bugscope Team they are usually found along the sides
• Bugscope Team up top next to Log Out on the right
• Teacher yes, they were on the wood-boring beetle

• Bugscope Team today the best place to find spiracles is on the grasshopper
• 8:39am
• Bugscope Team here it happens we are looking at the dorsal side of the aphid, and spiracles are usually found at the edges of the ventral side
• Teacher what is there "skin" carapace made out of?

• Teacher btw this is a 6th grade class
• Bugscope Team a protein like what your fingernails are made of

• Bugscope Team a shrimp shell is the same thing
• Teacher what are these pore-like holes?

• Bugscope Team those may not be part of the aphid

• Bugscope Team not sure
• Bugscope Team actually, I take that back

• Bugscope Team now that we are close it certainly looks quite like a spiracle

• Bugscope Team insects breathe through the spiracles, of which there are two on each side of each body segment

• Bugscope Team the spiracles can be opened or closed by the insects, and they lead, inside, to tracheae, which are ducts that channel air inside the body
• 8:44am

• Bugscope Team they are kind of like the pores that plants use to breath
• Bugscope Team the tracheae look like round cardboard tubes, with regular ridges

• Bugscope Team you can tell what this is

• Bugscope Team just above its mouthparts you can see a tiny fly clinging to a leg
• Bugscope Team insect mouthparts are complex, compared to ours
• Bugscope Team the mandibles open side to side, like a gate, and the maxillae open up and down
• Bugscope Team if the insect has that kind of mouth

• Bugscope Team for example if you look at the housefly, it has sponging mouthparts, which are quite different
• Bugscope Team the tiny fly looks like it is pole vaulting

• Bugscope Team the four 'feelers' around the mouth are called palps
• Bugscope Team the palps help the insect to taste and move around food
• Bugscope Team to the top right we can see the open end of one of them
• Teacher student wants to know if it is without shell; or is that color from the treatment
• 8:49am

• Bugscope Team it has a shell still
• Bugscope Team it's black and white because we are imaging with electrons instead of light.

• Bugscope Team the grasshopper has an exoskeleton -- so it has a kind of shell, like a suit of armor

• Bugscope Team to make the insects conductive for the electrons we coat the insects with the thin layer of metal
• Bugscope Team if we saw today's samples out of the microscope and on a tabletop, for example, they would all look silvery

• Bugscope Team because as Cate says they are coated with a thin layer of metal that looks silver
• Bugscope Team now we are looking at the open end of the palp, and we see tiny pointy hairs or bristles that are like tastebuds, on your tongue
• Teacher are the little hair-like things within for taste or feel?
• Teacher are the outer hairs for touch?
• Bugscope Team because insects have an exoskeleton -- the shell -- they need to have those hair-like things, called setae ('see-tee') to help them feel and taste and also sense hot and cold
• Bugscope Team yes the outer hairs are all likely for touch
• Bugscope Team the ones inside are for taste/smell and the ones outside are more for sense of touch

• 8:54am
• Bugscope Team some of the hairs are for what is called 'proprioception,' which is self-sensing, so the insect knows when it is touching something or when one of its limbs might be overextended
• Bugscope Team this is cool
• Teacher about how many eyes does it have?
• Bugscope Team the things that look like donuts are called 'pedicels'
• Bugscope Team I think they have two or three hundred, not sure

• Bugscope Team the tiny round things -- the spheres -- are called ommatidia, and they are individual lenses of the compound eyes
• Teacher what are pedicels for?
• Bugscope Team when the mosquito was alive they were not shriveled up like they are now
• Teacher what are the whiskers lower left of eyes?

• Bugscope Team i think those are on a palp

• Bugscope Team the pedicels are the bases of the antennae; in some insects they have sensors on the inside that help them sense forces that move the antennae

• Bugscope Team you can see the furry thing coming toward us -- that is one of the antennae

• Bugscope Team this is a female mosquito, and we can tell because it has plain antennae
• Bugscope Team this is cool

• 9:00am
• Teacher would the eyes not be shriveled peas when it was alive?
• Bugscope Team exactly jose

• Teacher is that a parasite on the eye?
• Bugscope Team that is a scale
• Teacher did it grow on the eye or flake off from another part of the body?
• Bugscope Team mosquitoes, moths, butterflies, and silverfish are covered with scales like that
• Bugscope Team it fell off from some other area
• Bugscope Team it flaked off -- they come off easily
• Teacher teacher was right for once
• Bugscope Team they provide protection to those insects that have them. if the insect flies or runs into a spider web, the scales can stick to the web and the insect can leave them and get away
• Teacher student asks why does base of pedicel now look more like a lens for an eye?
• Bugscope Team yay for the teacher!
• Bugscope Team the pedicel is in the place we would expect to see an eye, so it confuses us

• Bugscope Team the same thing happens with ants -- the antenna occupy the position where we would expect to find the eyes

• 9:05am
• Bugscope Team it shows how important the antennae are to ants
• Teacher mmm Ruffles; beautiful detail on the scale

• Bugscope Team sweet

• Bugscope Team scales that do not have holes in the ridges are considere to be more primitive than those with holes

• Teacher is this household mold?
• Bugscope Team there is a preset on the stub that has butterfly scales on it with holes in them

• Bugscope Team lots of mold

• Bugscope Team we are not sure but it is super cool to have found those ones with little suckers on them like octopus suckers
• Teacher is each globule a separate spore?

• Bugscope Team we are at such a high mag for these fragile objects that they are being distorted by the electron beam
• Bugscope Team those round parts are where the other spores were once attached, most likely

• Bugscope Team yes each globule is a single spore
• Bugscope Team awesome
• 9:10am
• Teacher so are you all

• Bugscope Team this is super cool too

• Bugscope Team you can see that the scales have an open lattice; they are much like feathers are to a bird
• Bugscope Team mosquito scales and silverfish scales are not like these

• Bugscope Team so pretty

• Bugscope Team the distance between the ridges is a bit smaller than the length of a rod-shaped bacterium

• Teacher is it salt?
• Bugscope Team there's a piece of salt hanging over the edge of the world

• 9:15am
• Bugscope Team yes it is a kind of salt we cannot get anymore, that we know of

• Bugscope Team it has that super cool incised pattern in it like it was sculpted
• Teacher what type of salt is it?
• Bugscope Team we think that the company that made it must have added an anti-caking agent that interrupted the way the sodium chloride crystals form
• Teacher is this a more or less perfect crystal than regular salt?
• Bugscope Team it used to come from Wendy's restaurants in those little paper packets

• Bugscope Team there is also some regular salt on the stub, and it has smooth edges
• Teacher which part is the brochosome? purpose?
• Bugscope Team the spheres with holes in them are the brochosomes

• Bugscope Team 250 to 400 nanometers in diameter
• Bugscope Team super small
• Bugscope Team near the length of visible light
• 9:21am
• Bugscope Team this helps to show why we cannot see color using an electron microscope

• Bugscope Team this is the tip of the proboscis of the female mosquito
• Bugscope Team you can see some of those same tiy scales to the far right just now

• Bugscope Team this is a sheath, and inside it is the fascicle that sticks into your skin when the mosquito bites you
• Teacher about how long is the fascicle?

• Bugscope Team it is about as long as the proboscis, so maybe 3 or 4 millimeters, maybe longer on industrial-sized mosquitoes

• Bugscope Team the fascicle needs to be able to penetrate your skin and reach the blood
• Bugscope Team this is the head of a moth, kind of dirty
• Bugscope Team its proboscis is coiled up when it is not being used
• 9:26am

• Bugscope Team a moth's proboscis can be very long, more than an inch sometimes, so it can reach deep into a flower
• Bugscope Team it is kind of like a straw
• Teacher what are the corn flakes above?

• Bugscope Team when the moth wants to extend it, it pushes hemolymph, which is insect 'blood,' into it, blowing it out like a party favor
• Bugscope Team those are scales

• Bugscope Team female pattern baldness

• Teacher what material is the eye made of?

• Bugscope Team it is also made of chitin -- the same protein

• Bugscope Team same as the rest of its exoskeleton

• Bugscope Team hello
• Bugscope Team some insects have piercing/sucking mouthparts, like aphids and like this true bug
• Teacher can you read me? is there a genus for bugs? family?
• Bugscope Team bedbugs are like this

• Bugscope Team hemiptera
• 9:31am

• Bugscope Team ptera means wing, like pterodactyl
• Bugscope Team cicadas, leafhoppers, stinkbugs, aphids

• Teacher more primitive Ruffles again
• Bugscope Team hemi means half; hemipterans have wings that are half hardenedf

• Bugscope Team yes those scales were from another insect
• Teacher what is the function of this?

• Bugscope Team this is one of the dual exhausts -- the cornicles or siphuncles found on aphids
• Bugscope Team most of them produce a kind of glue that hardens when it gets into the air
• Teacher thanks a million! class change time
• Bugscope Team an ant poking at the aphid from behind can be enveloped in the glue and immobilized
• Bugscope Team are we done for today?
• 9:38am
• Teacher unforetunately yes, this seemed easier than 2 years ago; STEM careers were good!
• Bugscope Team I hope everyone had fun this morning
• Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2012-106 is where you can access chat and images
• Teacher you guys are great keep up the missionary work!

• Bugscope Team ha thanks!