Connected on 2013-05-22 13:00:00 from Portage, Wisconsin, United States
- 12:31pm
- Bugscope Team sample is pumping down
Bugscope Team hello!
- 12:38pm
- 12:44pm
- 12:49pm
- 12:55pm
- Student We are signed in all together
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Student Thank you!
- Bugscope Team Cate is finding us just a few more cool places
- Bugscope Team we still have a butterfly wing and a cranefly to find for you
- Bugscope Team then we can give you control
- Student Sounds good...we are enjoying the images so far.
- Bugscope Team that was from a butterfly with orange wings with large silver areas
- 1:00pm
- Bugscope Team this is the crane fly
- Bugscope Team back to the wing...
- Bugscope Team alright we are ready!
- Bugscope Team I gave Saints control of the microscope
- Bugscope Team Cate is going up to her office and will log in in a minute
- Student Alright we are going to start with the fly claw
- Bugscope Team so please let us know when you have questions
- Bugscope Team would you prefer that Saint had control?
- Bugscope Team rather than Saints?
- Student Saints is fine....it is the whole class
- Bugscope Team the person on the Saints computer can click on any one of the presets to drive the 'scope to that place on the stub
- 1:06pm
- Bugscope Team if for some reason that is not working we can click on it for you
- Student I'm actually logged in as both, right now SAINT is the one that I'm typing under. Sorry for the confusion
- Bugscope Team okay I gave control to Saint, so you can drive from there
- Bugscope Team huh there is some extra stuff on the claw (looks like a moustache) to the right
- Student Are those things sticking out like hairs?
Bugscope Team yes they are! On insects we call hairs setae
- 1:11pm
- Bugscope Team they use the hairs to help them sense what is going on around them
- Bugscope Team they can't feel things through their exoskeleton like we can with our skin. Their exoskeleton is like a suit of armor
- Bugscope Team this is a wild-looking beetle
- Bugscope Team it has a flat head like a silverfish
- Bugscope Team you can see that it has one lamellated antenna on the left side there
- Student what does lamellated mean?
- Bugscope Team it means it's like a stack of plates
- 1:16pm
- Student Is that object more pollen?
Bugscope Team no that is a piece of junk debris, like a piece of dirt or a clod of plant fibers
- Bugscope Team these are called placoid sensillae, which means they are sensory, and they are plate-like
- Bugscope Team the sensillae are most likely chemosensory -- they give the wasp the ability to smell or taste the air
- Bugscope Team so cute!
- 1:21pm
- Bugscope Team this is a parasitoid wasp
- Bugscope Team they lay eggs in caterpillars
- Student Are the little holes like nostrils?
Bugscope Team the little holes are called 'anterior tentorial pits,' and they extend into the head but do not have an opening inside the head. They are supports for the head, to help it keep its shape.
- Bugscope Team they are kind of like 'sprues' in sculpture
- Bugscope Team the wasp has jaws (mandibles) that open side to side like a gate
- Bugscope Team because its head is tipped forward it is hard to make out the jaws
- Bugscope Team cool!
- 1:26pm
- Bugscope Team this is a male housefly\
- Student how do you tell the difference
- Bugscope Team in male flies, the eyes are often close together, whereas with females they are far apart\
- Bugscope Team so the males are like Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the females are like Uma Thurman.
- Bugscope Team we see see three ocelli, or simple eyes, on top of the head'
- Student Is that "hole" in his eye, debris?
- Bugscope Team it might be
- Bugscope Team you found pollen grains!
- Bugscope Team super cool
- 1:31pm
- Bugscope Team wow that piece of fungus jumped up onto the pollen
- Student Would that wash off when it gets wet or eventually fall off?
Bugscope Team it might fall off. Usually when the fly lands it will rub its arms over its head to clean its eyes and antennae
- Student We were wondering what that was...
- Bugscope Team this is what a palp -- an accessory mouthpart -- looks like up close
- Bugscope Team these are kind of like tastebuds, on your tongue
- Student Do most insects have these?
- Bugscope Team we see them on most beetles, and there is certainly something similar on most insects
- Bugscope Team this is the eye of the rolypoly
- Bugscope Team compound eye
- Bugscope Team it has very few facets
- Bugscope Team probably cannot see well at all
- Bugscope Team it is also covered with fungus -- with fungal hyphae, which is what the strands are called
- 1:37pm
- Bugscope Team rolypolies are called 'isopods.' iso, like in an isosceles triangle, means 'the same.'
- Bugscope Team and 'pod' means foot
- Student The legs look a crab with all the different parts...
Bugscope Team you are right! rolypolies are actually crustaceans
- Student Why does it appear to have more than 6 legs?
Bugscope Team rolypolys are not insects, so they have more than 6 legs
- Bugscope Team I think they usually have 7 or 9 pairs of legs
- Bugscope Team 7 I believe
- Bugscope Team this is really cool
- Bugscope Team pollen!
- 1:43pm
- Bugscope Team this ant has more ommatidia (eye facets) than the rolypoly!
- Bugscope Team ants are related to wasps and bees
- Student what is the shaded area?
Bugscope Team the darker areas have some kind of film on them, stuck to the very fine hairs (microsetae)
- Bugscope Team this is a beetle
- Bugscope Team you can see on the far right, top corner, one of the same palps we saw earlier up close
- 1:48pm
- Bugscope Team see the furry parts of the leg?
- Bugscope Team tenent setae help the insect to stick to vertical surfaces
- Bugscope Team like velcro
- Bugscope Team the final five segments of the leg are called tarsi, or tarsomeres
- Bugscope Team some beetles cannot climb on walls, but this one can
- Bugscope Team not like we do, but they might lost some in their short lifespan.
- Student Do they lose hairs like we do?
Bugscope Team they can lose hairs like us, but they do not grow them back
- Bugscope Team not exactly like we do, as Cate said
- Bugscope Team these are also setae, but they are modified into these flat shapes like little boogie boards, or like shingles on a house
- Bugscope Team and this is the head of a cranefly
- 1:53pm
- Bugscope Team I broke a couple of legs off so we could could see the head better
- Student So the legs are hollow?
- Bugscope Team yes the legs are mostly hollow when we see them
- Bugscope Team there would normally be hemolymph, which is bug blood
- Bugscope Team also little tendon structures would be there, which help with moving the legs
- Bugscope Team when insects die, the hemolymph goes away, and the tendons constrict, which is actually why insects pull their legs up when they die
- Student What "color" would bug blood be?
Bugscope Team hemolymph is usually clear, but when you squish an insect sometimes you also get the contents of its gut, which are yellow
- Bugscope Team or often, they are yellow
- Bugscope Team or green
- 1:58pm
- Bugscope Team here we can see the mandibles, which open side to side, and four palps, and also the frons, which is the top plate of the mouth
- Bugscope Team the pulvillus is the part with the sticky hairs, called tenent setae
- Bugscope Team it is almost right in the center
- Student What is the pulvillus
Bugscope Team it's the pad of 'fur' before the claw
- Bugscope Team there, the sideways moustache is the pulvillus
- Student That is probably sticky too?
- Bugscope Team yes it is!
- Student THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING!
- Bugscope Team it's cool it is so flat, like a brush, and that is how it sticks to flat surfaces like glass
- Bugscope Team Thank You, Everyone!
- Bugscope Team thank you!
- 2:04pm
- Bugscope Team SM if you are still listening, please let us know if you have any questions
- Guest Thank you. We will be working with you next Wed. and sorry not to have sent things like pollen and seeds and such dilapidated bug samples. We'd LOVE to see some that you have in house such as the scales of butterfly wings, Mosquito Probiscii?, and lots of toenails!
Bugscope Team we will provide whatever we have, almost always something fun
- Guest Do you have spider webs?
Bugscope Team we can see spider web right now...
- Bugscope Team it is often not so interesting
- Bugscope Team oh SM I just gave you control
- Guest The grade school kids must be so much fun to work with! Do you have Lyme ticks with Spirochetes?
- Guest How do I zoom?
- 2:10pm
- Bugscope Team I've never seen spirochetes on ticks before. We see bacilli.
- Bugscope Team you can click + or - on the top of the screen -- I think you figured it out...
- Bugscope Team you can also click on any of the presets to get the 'scope to drive to that place
- Guest Is the lower section an eye structure?
- Bugscope Team there is an eye in the image, but the lower portion is just part of the cuticle
- Bugscope Team SM what we do is use whatever we get, and it is hard to keep stock of anything
- Bugscope Team so we do not often have ticks or things like bedbugs
- Bugscope Team we can only use a given sample once
- Guest Do you want me to find some of those for you? How about lice?
- Bugscope Team we would love to have ticks or lice or fleas or bedbugs or mosquitoes...
- 2:15pm
- Guest When you were helping develop the camera did you wear special lenses?
Bugscope Team haha You mean for this? No...
- Bugscope Team this dude is covered with mold
- Guest I guess these are the fungal threads....
- Bugscope Team yes they are -- hyphae
- Bugscope Team sometimes we get insects/arthropods that are in poor shape, but there is often something we can image
- Bugscope Team earwigs are super cool because they often have mites
- Guest I'd gotten some faceted lenses so that the kids could See how an insect 'sees'. but the facets were flat. I'm sorry about our specimen. I had put some in vinegar before the alcohol- No experts here!
- Bugscope Team dustmites, however, are softbodied, like aphids, and they shrivel up so badly you cannot recognize them
- Guest One of the undecipherable things sent was a spider egg sac.
- Bugscope Team I tell people they can send us 'bugs' in vodka if they want, and we will change to better alcohol and critical point dry them
- Guest I was just reading about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjzs3V7rnBk and http://www.newstimes.com/news/science/article/Thailand-urged-to-explore-edible-insect-market-4534036.php
- Bugscope Team we cannot tell if our own seemingly perfect samples are actually going to be good until we see them up close
- 2:20pm
- Bugscope Team I think it's going to be a while before I start eating insects.
- Bugscope Team fly ommatidia with mechanosensory setae on them
- Guest There will be some children from a Thai school as guests next week.
- Guest Why does the fly need setae on their eye?
- Bugscope Team that's right!
- Bugscope Team the setae help give the fly information about wind speed and direction
- Guest Do they 'feel' with their eyes?
Bugscope Team yes they do!
- Bugscope Team insects and other similar arthropods have an exoskeleton, so they need to have setae sticking through that 'armor' to allow them to sense their environment
- 2:25pm
- Guest Very cool! Do they have altimeters, too?
Bugscope Team I don't think they have altimeters, but they can sense hot/cold as well as wind, and they are quite sensitive to chemical scents in the air; they know where they should be in order to live, feed, breed
- Guest Thank you! I wonder what their chemical sensors look like. Do you ever image molluscs?
- Guest Do you have a dragonfly you can show us on Wednesday? (sorry for so many questions - seemingly random)
- Bugscope Team the chemical sensors, some of them, look like hairs, or tastebuds, as today; also, some of them are placoid -- flat disclike areas
- Bugscope Team we have not imaged molluscs that I recall
- Bugscope Team I don't think we have any dragonflies right now
- Bugscope Team oops lost that palp
- Bugscope Team dandelion seed
- Guest Thank you very, very much! You are very patient
- Bugscope Team that is one of the screws on the microscope stage
- 2:30pm
- Bugscope Team you know we are super lucky to have a good-sized lab full of equipment like this. so it is great to be able to kind of share it/
- Bugscope Team I'll have to shut down now so I can make a few changes for the researchers who are coming in.
- Guest I can't even begin to imagine how much power/electricity/and equipment costs!
- Bugscope Team But we look forward to seeing you online next week.
- Guest Bye! for now...
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Bugscope Team Thank you!
