Connected on 2013-05-31 14:30:00 from Alameda, California, United States
- 2:12pm
- Bugscope Team hello@
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team we are ready to roll
- Teacher The students will be in the classroom in 5 minutes
- Bugscope Team Ms. Uhlig you have control now.
- Bugscope Team super cool
- Bugscope Team you may select from any of the presets on the lefthand screen
- Teacher thank you for giving this unique opportunity to us.
Bugscope Team this is really fun for us
- Bugscope Team this is the pupa
- Teacher also, today we would like to see a compound eye
- Bugscope Team how about a nice moth compound eye?
- Teacher great, we just had a moth emerge from its cocoon yesterday
- 2:17pm
- Bugscope Team did it fly into the fluorescent lights?
- Bugscope Team haha I am such an optimist
- Teacher gtg get my class brb
- Bugscope Team we had a Monarch butterfly hatch out, here in the basement, in the wintertime
- 2:23pm
- Teacher okay we are back
- Bugscope Team hi!
- Teacher almost quiet and ready
- Bugscope Team this is a closeup view of the moth's compound eye, showing only a few of the ommatidia
- Bugscope Team you can change the mag if you'd like, using the controls at the top of the viewing screen
- Bugscope Team you can also click on any of the presets on the lefthand screen
- Bugscope Team clicking on a preset will make the microscope drive to that position
- Bugscope Team please let us know when the students have any questions at all
- Teacher This is Rm 7 and Rm 10 second graders
- Teacher please introduce yourselves
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Bugscope Team I'm Cate. I work with the powerful microscope you are using today
- Bugscope Team I'm Scot, and Cate is here as well -- she put the sample together for us
- Bugscope Team As you can see, insects are a lot hairier than they seem
- Bugscope Team Moths have scales, which are kind of like feathers.
- Bugscope Team SEM is the scanning electron microscope you are running from your classroom.
- Teacher student, why do some insects have special hair?
- Teacher Student = ss:
- 2:28pm
- Bugscope Team I think every insect we have ever seen has setae, which is what the hairs are called.
- Teacher SS: what insect are we looking at
Bugscope Team this is the head of the moth
- Bugscope Team They need to have setae so they can use them to sense their surroundings.
- Bugscope Team some setae help with sense of touch, some help with smell, and some help with temperature
- Bugscope Team Some of the setae are chemosensory, which are those Cate mentioned that help with smell.
- Teacher ?
- Bugscope Team Because insects have an exoskeleton, it's like they're wearing a suit of armor.
- Teacher SS:do all insects have setae
Bugscope Team yes. They need those hairs or they won't survive very long. SOme insects will have more than others
- Bugscope Team so the hairs (setae) stick through the suit of armor (the exoskeleton, or shell) and allow the insect to sense its surroundings
- Bugscope Team compared to mammals, like us. we have skin with sensitive nerve endings in it for touch sensing
- Bugscope Team and we have noses that help us smell
- Bugscope Team and the nerve endings in our skin also let us know about hot/cold
- Teacher SS: why are insects and their setae so small?
Bugscope Team Insects can - fortunately for us - be only so big because their respiratory system is not as good as ours.
- Bugscope Team insects are small because their breathing system can't support anythng bigger. If there were a higher concentration of oxygen in the air, like in prehistoric time, then they could be bigger
- 2:34pm
- Bugscope Team the setae are presumably in perfect proportion to the size of the insects' bodies
- Teacher SS: how many eyes in one compound eye?
- Bugscope Team this is a milkweed bug
- Bugscope Team ants can have only 20 or so ommatidia, or facets, in the compound eye
- Teacher it looks like it has compound eyes?
Bugscope Team they do. All adult insects have compound eyes
- Bugscope Team some large hornets can have as many as 17,000 ommatidia per compound eye
- Bugscope Team how many facets in a compound eye depends on the species
- Bugscope Team and dragonflies are said to have 32,000 ommatidia per compound eye
- Teacher that is pretty cool!
- Bugscope Team the insects that rely more heavily on sight tend to have more facets
- Bugscope Team some flying insects have simple eyes, in addition to their compound eyes
- Teacher SS: why do insects have compound eyes?
- Bugscope Team there's also a difference between nocturnal (night active) and diurnal (day active) species
- Bugscope Team compound eyes help insects see more at one time - they give the insect much better peripheral vision
- Bugscope Team also, compound eyes are very sensitive to changes in the visual field, which means they can process movement very quickly, a good thing in the very fast and dangerous insect world
- Bugscope Team so when we try to swat a fly, it looks like we are moving quite slowly, to the fly
- 2:39pm
- Bugscope Team whoa those look cool
- Bugscope Team this is a pair of mandibular and maxillary palps on the mealworm's head
- Bugscope Team the mouth parts
- Bugscope Team in between is one of the mandibles
- Teacher what part of the mealworm is this?
Bugscope Team we are near the head. These are mouthparts
- Bugscope Team in people, the mandible is the lower jaw and the maxilla is the upper jaw, which is of course part of your head
- Teacher SS:why are there so many little dot things?
- Bugscope Team those bumps look like they can potentially be taste receptors?
Bugscope Team yes!
- Bugscope Team the dotlike things at the tips of the palps, which are accessory mouthparts, are taste receptors, like tastebuds on your tongue
- Bugscope Team now we see one set of legs
- Bugscope Team insects have six legs, one head, a thorax, an abdomen, and two antennae
- Bugscope Team some also have a prothorax
- Teacher do they have 3 sets of legs?
- Bugscope Team yes three sets of legs
- Teacher or the abdomen and thorax?
- Bugscope Team yea, it's kind of like the shoulder/chest area
- Bugscope Team some caterpillars, which are larval insects, also have what are called prolegs, like 'proto' legs
- Bugscope Team the prothorax is between the head and the thorax. sometimes the first set of legs is attached to the prothorax
- Teacher is the prothorax the middle of the body?
Bugscope Team prothorax is slightly more specific than thorax, in that it's the first of three segments of the thorax
- 2:45pm
- Bugscope Team Hello Facundo!
- Teacher SS:are those hairy legs?
Bugscope Team looks like it. since insects have exoskeletons, they rely on these hairs to sense their environment and also to get a sense of where their own appendages are.
- Bugscope Team the hairs on a pulvillus are called tenent setae
- Teacher SS:how do bugs crawl up trees without falling?
Bugscope Team some bugs have hairy pads that called pulvilluses that help them cling to branches
Bugscope Team their claws also can help with clinging
- Guest hello scot how are you?
Bugscope Team good! welcome aboard from Argentina!
- Teacher buenos tardes
- Bugscope Team Cate let me know that the plural of pulvillus is pulvilli
- Bugscope Team buenos tardes!
- Teacher What is a spiral?
- Bugscope Team sometimes super tiny hairs are called villi, so pulvillus is a tricky word. a villus is a tiny hair
- Guest Ok, thank you, I`ll stay here only reading what are you doing!!
- Teacher spiracle?
Bugscope Team yes this is a spiracle, which is what insects use to collect air!
- Bugscope Team there are usually two spiracles per body segment, on each side
- Bugscope Team they have a kind of filtration apparatus to keep dust out
- 2:50pm
- Bugscope Team this is a darkling beetle pupa
- Bugscope Team it is kind of not pretty
- Teacher is this specimen damaged?
Bugscope Team it looks like it was opened up where the adult came out
- Bugscope Team Cate smashed it.
Bugscope Team did not!
- Bugscope Team jk
- Bugscope Team we cannot see the eyes' pupae are kind of weird
- Teacher like nostrils!
Bugscope Team yes! they are connected to tracheae that deliver air to the inner organs
Bugscope Team and in the case of insects, the air is actually delivered directly to each cell, since they don't have a closed circulatory system
- Bugscope Team this is one of the antennae of a darkling beetle
- Bugscope Team Joe is an entomologist.
- Bugscope Team beneath the antenna we can see the beetle's compound eye, one of them
- Bugscope Team antennae usually have lots of chemosensors and chemosensory setae on them
- Teacher hexagons!
- Bugscope Team this is the moth's compound eye, up close'
- Teacher looks like a honeycomb
- 2:55pm
- Bugscope Team hexagons are a perfect shape for a sphere made of smaller spheres
- Teacher SS:do insects eat meat?
Bugscope Team some insects eat meat
- Bugscope Team dermestid beetles eat meat, and leather
- Bugscope Team moths can see colors that we cannot see
Bugscope Team yup! a lot of insects can see ultraviolet light, although they miss out on the red end of the spectrum
- Bugscope Team but lots of other insects will eat meat as well. insects do not let things go to waste
- Bugscope Team this is the tip of one of the moth's legs
- Bugscope Team you can see that the moth has claws
- Teacher no exoskeletons?
- Bugscope Team here we can also see the pads of sticky hairs that help the moth cling to vertical surfaces and even upside down
- Teacher SS: why do the moths/silkworms feel squishy?
Bugscope Team they have an exoskeleton but it is soft so they can grow
- 3:00pm
- Bugscope Team moths are not so squishy but they are covered with fine scales that protect them from getting caught in spider webs
- Teacher that bugs me...
Bugscope Team haha
- Bugscope Team we are not sure what these tiny crystals are from
- Teacher thank you for your time Joseph, Cate and Scott
- Teacher we need to go home :(
- Bugscope Team thanks for joining us today!
- Bugscope Team Thank You for connecting with us today!
- Bugscope Team animal fibers oops
- Bugscope Team I had it backwards
- Bugscope Team they like the plant fibers that are in clothes. Cotton is part of a plant
Bugscope Team if you get holes in cotton clothes, it's more likely dermestids (carpet beetles)
- Bugscope Team eww
- Bugscope Team not a big fan of dermestids
- Bugscope Team haha yea...they get into everything
- Bugscope Team so hard to get rid of
- Bugscope Team Facundo please let us know if you would like to drive a bit when Ms. Uhlig is done.
- Guest no thanks may be in a next session!!
- Bugscope Team alright cool! you are always welcome
