Connected on 2014-04-16 09:00:00 from Wharton County, Texas, United States
- 8:02am
- Bugscope Team sample will be in shortly...
- 8:08am
- Bugscope Team sample is pumping down
- Bugscope Team we can see the sample in the vacuum chamber now
- Bugscope Team as soon as the vacuum is good enough, we'll turn on the electron beam, align the microscope settings, and start making presets for today's session
- 8:16am
- 8:22am
- 8:29am
- 8:35am
- 8:42am
- 8:47am
- 8:52am
- Teacher Hello, this is East Bernard Elementary. I'm getting the computer and screen set up for the students. I will have my class and a few classes joining us over then next 45 min.
- Bugscope Team super cool!
- Bugscope Team please allow us to finish the presets. After that you can control the microscope
- 8:58am
- Teacher Sorry! We will wait.
- Bugscope Team it's not a problem. We are almost done
- Bugscope Team we are done with presets now. you can go ahead and drive around
- 9:03am
- Teacher Great! Thanks!
- Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Cate will be on in a minute.
- Bugscope Team Hello Kiki!
- Teacher Thank you we are thrilled to be here!
- Teacher Why does the ant appear hairy/]
- Bugscope Team please let us know when you have questions, about anything
- Bugscope Team the ant is indeed hairy, as we find many insects are
- 9:09am
- Bugscope Team the hairs, which are called setae (see-tee), have a number of functions. Primarily, they are sensory, meaning that they help the insect collect information about its environment
- Teacher What is this furry part?
Bugscope Team those are palps, on either side of the moth's proboscis, which is what it uses to suck up food, in the form of nectar, from flowers
- Teacher How many lenses are in a compound eye?
Bugscope Team on this moth's compound eye there are likely a few thousand
- Bugscope Team compared to this ant, which has perhaps 30 or 40 eye facets
- Bugscope Team the palps we mentioned before are accessory mouthparts that help insects taste and manipulate their food
- Bugscope Team this is kind of like armor, like a knight would have, or the knight's horse, to protect it
- 9:14am
- Bugscope Team some bristles are used by insects to tell if their limbs are overextended
- Bugscope Team insects and similar arthropods, like shrimp, do not have skin like we do. instead they have an exoskeleton -- a shell like a suit of armor that protects them
- Teacher why do the roaches have horns/spikes in their knees?
Bugscope Team bristles like that can be for protection and also for sensing touch
Bugscope Team they also tell them from overextending their legs. They don't have the sense of pain we get when we are bending our limbs in weird ways
- Teacher Is this how the beetle eats? what does it eat?
Bugscope Team a lot of beetles -- we don't know for sure about this one -- are foragers, and eat whatever material they find that might be edible, like decaying plants
- Bugscope Team we see palps here, but they're not at all like those of the moth
- Bugscope Team palps are often (look at one of of the ants' mouths) used as accessory mouthparts
- Teacher why do insects have so many legs?
Bugscope Team all insects, as adults, have six legs; so I guess it means they are all related that way. it suits the shapes of their bodies
- Teacher is the tongue rough so that it can scrape inside the flower for the nectar?
- Bugscope Team millipedes, centipedes, and rolypolies, none of which are insects, have more legs
- 9:19am
- Bugscope Team there is no specific reason why they have 6 and not 8, like spiders, or 4, like land mammals. It is just an accident of evolution that the ancestor of all insects had six legs
- Bugscope Team rolypolies are crustaceans, like shrimp and lobster and crabs
- Teacher That is cool!
- Bugscope Team there is a small number of arthropods that have six legs but are not technically insects; they're called hexapods
- Bugscope Team and ticks go through juvenile phases in which they have six legs
- Bugscope Team when you rub a butterfly's wings, these are what come off, like powder
- Bugscope Team these are scales, kind of like shingles on a house
- Bugscope Team oops now we're looking at an ant claw
- 9:24am
- Teacher why does this pollen look like a cocoon?
Bugscope Team they come in a lot of different shapes. These are just are lily pollen look. They must be sticky and light to they can move to other areas easily. Ragweed look like spiky balls so that they can stick to your clothes
- Bugscope Team see the moth's antennae?
- Bugscope Team this is the ant's mouth in which we can see its palps
- Teacher what are the dots mid picture?
Bugscope Team those are the tips of palps
- 9:29am
- Bugscope Team they are coming out toward us
- Teacher what is their purpose?
- Bugscope Team they help the ant taste its prospective food -- what it might want to eat
- Teacher thank you
- Bugscope Team to the left we see a loose scale from a moth or butterfly -- or from a mosquito of silverfish
- Bugscope Team this is kind of sad -- the roach's head is broken
- Bugscope Team roaches are very streamlined
- Bugscope Team the compound eyes are so smooth it can be hard to see the individual facets
- Bugscope Team haha so does this look like salt to you?
- Bugscope Team most salt is cubic, like this, like little blocks
- Teacher nope!
- Bugscope Team here is an ant's compound eye
- Bugscope Team yes ants in general cannot see as well as moths
- 9:34am
- Bugscope Team some species of ants do not have eyes at all
- Teacher we wondering if the ant has poor vision due to less facets than say moths...
Bugscope Team yes they do. but they may be more sensitive to chemicals than moths. They rely more heavily on their antennae than their eyes, since they live in the ground
- Teacher amazing!
- Bugscope Team ants depend very strongly on their antennae, which pick up, as Cate says, chemical signals
- Bugscope Team ants are predators in the insect world, and many insects have defenses, of some sort, against ants
- Bugscope Team aphids, for example, have things that look like dual exhaust pipes -- they're called cornicles, or siphuncles -- that if ants touch them will squirt out a kind of glue that immobilizes ants
- Teacher cool
- Bugscope Team on the other hand, some ants protect aphids, and the aphids reward them by producing a kind fo sugary nectar
- Bugscope Team to the left we see the ant's mandibles, which are the jaws.
- 9:40am
- Bugscope Team in insects, the ones that have mandibles, the mandibles open left and right, like a gate
- Bugscope Team our lower jaw is called a mandible, and our upper jaw, part of the rest of our head, is called a maxilla
- Teacher what is ommatidia?
Bugscope Team they are the individual facets your see here on the compound eye
- Bugscope Team last week there was an article online that said that the little features we see on the individual ommatidia are there to cut doiwn glare
- Bugscope Team down...
- Bugscope Team those tiny features are smaller than a micrometer -- they are on the nanoscale
- Teacher is the lady bug larvae available?
- Bugscope Team bacteria, for example, are often about 2 microns (micrometers) long
- Bugscope Team if you can't select it, we can drive there for you
- Bugscope Team a micrometer (micron) is a thousandth of a millimeter, or a millionth of a meter
- 9:45am
- Bugscope Team a nanometer is a thousandth of a micrometer, or a billionth of a meter\
- Teacher are the spikes for protection?
Bugscope Team yes we think they are
- Bugscope Team ladybugs are predators, even as larvae; they love to eat aphids
- Bugscope Team here you can see a very small antenna and four palps
- Bugscope Team the eyes are super tiny, like little bumps
- Bugscope Team this is the moth'
- Bugscope Team s proboscis, which is coiled up when it is not being used
- Bugscope Team it is like a long straw that the moth can stick into a flower and use to draw out nectar
- Bugscope Team it's mostly red ants that sting
- Teacher are there any ants that don't sting?
Bugscope Team yes there are so many kinds of ants that there are really almost any variation.
- Bugscope Team we can see the stingers when they have them
- Bugscope Team some ants spray formic acid as a protection against predators
- Bugscope Team the abdomen of an ant is called a 'gaster.'
- 9:51am
- Bugscope Team ants often have, on both of their forelegs, a comb that they can use to clean their antennae
- Bugscope Team here it is
- Teacher All of our students thank you so very much for your time and all of your information! You guys rock!
- Bugscope Team thank you for using bugscope with us today
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Teacher This is amazing. A fascinating opportunity.
- Bugscope Team This is super fun for us.
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2014-035
- Teacher We are going to log off. Is there anything specific I should do before?
- Bugscope Team this is your member page, with today's transcript on it
- Bugscope Team we are good, no. Thank YO
- Bugscope Team you!
- Bugscope Team haha
- Teacher Thanks again!
- Bugscope Team Bye!
