Connected on 2010-10-18 16:00:00 from Hayward, CA, US
- 2:54pm
- Bugscope Team sample is pumping down...
- 3:22pm
- Bugscope Team Cranefly
- 3:28pm
- 3:34pm
- 3:42pm
- 3:48pm
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- Teacher We will be there in 10 minutes :) YEAH!!
- 3:56pm
- Bugscope Team this is kind of cool -- a little bouquet of mold spores on the cricket's compound eye
- 4:02pm
- Teacher That's awesom!
- Teacher Aesome!
- Teacher awesome!!!!!
- Bugscope Team this sample has a lot of mold on it -- I'm sorry
- Bugscope Team all insects have six legs, or arms
- Teacher That's ok - what are the hairs on the claw? How do the spikes function?
- Bugscope Team and many of them also have six claws
- Bugscope Team some of the tiny hairs are microsetae, some of the larger hairs are setae, and some of what we see might be called bristles
- Bugscope Team some of the larger setae/bristles are mechanosensory -- they let the wasp know when it is touching something
- Bugscope Team insects and other similar arthropods do not have skin with nerves in it like we do. instead they have an exoskeleton, or a shell, like a shrimp, for example
- Bugscope Team so they have their skeleton on the outside
- Bugscope Team it's like if you were walking around in a suit of armor -- you wouldn't be able to feel anything touching the surface of the armor
- 4:07pm
- Bugscope Team but if you had little hairs, like cat or rat whiskers, sticking through the armor, or shell, you could use those to help sense your environment
- Bugscope Team that is why they say Monarch butterflies can smell with their feet -- they have chemosensory setae on their feet
- Teacher What is this fun looking juncture?
- Bugscope Team these are tarsi, which is what the final 4 or 5 segments of one of the limbs are called -- the distal segments
- Teacher Is this for being able to bend? A joint? are there ligaments inside?
- Bugscope Team at the body there might be a condyle, then a femur, then a tibia, and then a number of tarsi, or tarsomeres, including the end of the limb with the claw
- Bugscope Team there are ligaments, or tendons, inside
- Teacher A leg model?
- Bugscope Team there is a tendon-like thing inside the tarsus that pulls the claw to close it; it's called an 'unguitractor.'
- 4:12pm
- Bugscope Team much like one of those claw-like tools you might have to reach something on a high shelf
- Teacher So tarsus -= leg segment? Like metacarpals?
- Bugscope Team well a tarsus is like a forearm segment
- Bugscope Team carpals I think are more analogous to claws
- Teacher Tell us about the eyes and jaws, oh wise one :)
Bugscope Team heh. okay the eyes can be simple, like each of a spider's (usually) eight eyes, or they can be compound (complex), like where we are now
- Bugscope Team you can see that there are thousands of ommatidia -- the individual facets, or lenses, in a way, of the compound eye
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes, you would have much better peripheral vision, certainly
- 4:17pm
- Bugscope Team and you would also have the ability to sense changes in the visual field very quickly
- Teacher Does it create one image or many? Can they lose an omatidia and still see?
Bugscope Team many images that are combined in the brain into a cohesive whole, we think
- Bugscope Team so if an ommatidium has some juju on it the insect can still see -- like having some kind crud on your windshield
- Bugscope Team kinda...
- Bugscope Team this is a rolypoly, and the head is at the top
- Bugscope Team but its antennae are busted off
- Bugscope Team and it is supremely like moldy, like a bowl of mold
- Teacher hi this is veronica
- Bugscope Team Hi Veronica!
- Bugscope Team You can see the left antenna base has someone's scale in it
- Teacher can you help me drive the microscope over the image? can we see the back
Bugscope Team the samples are mounted on their backs, coated with gold-palladium alloy and stuck down on carbon tape; they also have silver paint to help ground them
- 4:22pm
- Bugscope Team kind of a long way of saying that we cannot turn the little dude over
- Bugscope Team to see its back
- Teacher what are we seeing on the scales
- Bugscope Team we think the holes make the scale that much lighter in weight
- Teacher what are the holes for?
Bugscope Team they make the scales lighter and the holes allow the light to refract and give the scales color
- Bugscope Team sometimes the holes have pigment granules in them
- Bugscope Team yes! as Cate says, the shape of the scale and the separation between the ridges can produce structural colors, in addition to the colors produced by the pigment
- Teacher Hi, this is John. I'm from Wisconsin (Madison). I want to try a new specimen.
Bugscope Team John it looks like we're on the bee compound eye now
- Bugscope Team see the ommatidia? the individual facets of the eye?
- Teacher What is this exactly?
Bugscope Team the is on the honeybee eye. the hairs are coming out of it which are called setae
- Bugscope Team I needa back off and let Cate answer...
- 4:28pm
- Teacher Why do they need spikes on their eyes?
Bugscope Team they might help with pollination by collecting them on it
- Bugscope Team on fruit fly eyes we see lots of smaller setae that are said to provide information about windspeed and wind direction
- Teacher What is the actual size of this eye? Also, how dense are the hairs on the eyes?
- Bugscope Team in between the ommatidia
- Bugscope Team the eye is about 2 mm or so in diameter. for some reason the micron bar is not working on the microscope right now
- Teacher Could we please get a better focus and contrast?
- Teacher Out of curiosity, what is the average lifespan of a fly?
Bugscope Team they live a month to a month and a half; they are said to be able to mate successfully within 36 hours of pupating
- 4:33pm
- Teacher how often to they have new babies?
- Bugscope Team insect jaws, which you had asked about earlier, open from side to side rather than up and down like a human or dog or cat or lion mouth.....are not
- Bugscope Team but not all insects have jaws
- Bugscope Team many flies, like house flies and fruit flies, have sponging mouthparts
- Teacher is the magnification working? We keep seeing, 2666. This is Joanna!
- Teacher what is the dark black spot in the upper middle of the image?
- Bugscope Team the bee, here, has a kind of tongue-like proboscis that is called a 'glossa'
- Bugscope Team some adult insects do not have mouths because they may not eat at all as adults
- Teacher what are we seeing on the spider?
- Bugscope Team some adult insects may live only for a few hours
- Teacher how do they survive if they don't eat?
- Teacher Now I see the slashing mouth.Can we see the black widow spider with the hourglass?
- Bugscope Team here, on the wasp, we can see forked mouthparts -- jaws, or mandibles -- that open left and right like little gates
- 4:39pm
- Teacher Do they break their food in half, or cut it down like a lawnmower?
- Teacher When they cut their food, do their arms help bring it into the mouth part? Or is this one of the insects who don't eat as adults?
- Bugscope Team you can see that the compound eye is not completely oval. there's an area below the scape of the antenna where the vestiture encroaches on the eye
- Bugscope Team Hello Beth!
- Bugscope Team you can see where the antennae are connected to the head with ball-and-socket joints
- Teacher Would you please drive the microscope on the black widow?
- Teacher Do the antane sockets between the eyes work like a hip joint?
Bugscope Team yes much like a hip joint
- Teacher Help...
- Teacher what is this?
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Bugscope Team this is one of the applicator sticks Cate put on the stub to hold the spider up.
- Teacher Please, please, the black widow! Thanks, this is Joanna
- 4:44pm
- Bugscope Team I'm going to use the microscope controls....
- Teacher thanks
- Teacher Hi, this is Sarah and Patrick
- Teacher How much does this equipment cost??
- Bugscope Team this is one of the spider's claws
- Teacher How does the spider use its claws?
- Bugscope Team when we got it
- Teacher We'll take 2
- Teacher :-)
- Bugscope Team I'm sorry we really cannot see much of the body today.
- 4:49pm
- Teacher What are we seeing now?
- Bugscope Team this is what was left of the black widow's body
- Bugscope Team the cephalothorax
- Bugscope Team you can see the legs are broken off, most of them, from the body
- Bugscope Team the abdomen was missing as well...
- Teacher Are the legs hollow?
- Bugscope Team yes they aere
- Bugscope Team oops
- Bugscope Team spiders have this really cool thing they do called autotomizing, in which they can release a leg, for example, just drop it off, when they sense toxin entering it
- Bugscope Team this one might have given up too many legs
- Bugscope Team cricket claw
- 4:55pm
- Teacher What other specimens could one send to Bugscope? Shrimp? Other arthropods?
- Bugscope Team see the mold spores?
- Teacher Cool mold spores!
- Bugscope Team shrimp would be big, but small insects and arthropods are great
- Bugscope Team what we like in particular are insects that are specialized in some way
- Bugscope Team or -- they're not insects -- ticks
- Bugscope Team earwigs are cool because they often have mites on them
- Bugscope Team roaches are not that that interesting because they are generalized
- Teacher Ok -the is Dr. Korb again - our time is up! thanks for the great information! See you tomorrow afternoon again!
- Bugscope Team even praying mantids are not that interesting
- Bugscope Team See You!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team see you tomorrow evening!
