Connected on 2015-04-16 14:00:00 from Montgomery County, New York, United States
- 1:09pm
- Bugscope Team specimen chamber is pumping down
- 1:17pm
- 1:23pm
- 1:28pm
- 1:33pm
- 1:39pm
- 1:46pm
- 1:51pm
- Bugscope Team we are ready to roll
- 2:03pm
- Student Hey i'm ready
- Guest hey
- Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team this is an ant...
- Bugscope Team please let us know when you have questions for us
- Teacher o-o
- Student hey
- Student Hey i'm ready duuudes
- Student sup peeps
- Bugscope Team see the mandibles?
- Student Wassup
- Student bruh
- Bugscope Team they are serrated like a steak knife
- Student yes
- Bugscope Team and the compound eyes?
- Teacher heyyyy
- Student whats up bruh
- Student yolo
- Student sup
- Student hi
- Student hey
- Student OK
- Bugscope Team Hello Everyone!
- Student hola
- Student hi
- Bugscope Team we need to set this up so someone is driving...
- Bugscope Team Zeke you are the supreme ruler; you can drive the 'scope now
- Bugscope Team hi!
- Teacher Hello, I'm Ms. Wagner
Bugscope Team Hello!
Bugscope Team Okay Ms. Wagner I made you the supreme ruler
- Bugscope Team sorry Zeke. a very brief reign
- Bugscope Team do you have the controls at the top of the screen?
- Bugscope Team above the imae
- Bugscope Team image*
- 2:08pm
- Teacher I'd like to know exactly what kind of 'scope this is
Bugscope Team you are using a scanning electron microscope. the electron beam scans down along the screen
- Teacher What vontrols should I be seeing above the image?
- Bugscope Team we are collecting a signal from the electrons that bounce back off the sample, so that is why we see a black and white image
- Teacher *controls
- Bugscope Team do you see a gray bar with magnification, focus, contrast and brightness?
- Teacher On the bottom of the image I see 1mm and 80 x magnification
- Teacher that is all
- Bugscope Team we have been running into a problem where not everybody is getting all the control. you should probably still be able to choose different images. it's ok
- Teacher ok
- 2:15pm
- Teacher Alexia would like to know why there are tiny hairs on the mandebles
Bugscope Team the tiny hairs are called setae, and they are sensory: they sense touch or wind or scent or hot/cold depending on which ones they are
- Teacher And thank you for your reply to Alexia's question
- Teacher If I do not have the controls at the top of the image will I be able to zoom in or not
Bugscope Team no, but i can do it if you want
- Teacher Perfect. Thank you
- Bugscope Team it's possible, that if you log out and back in you might be able to get the controls
- Teacher How does the ant's mouth open
Bugscope Team the mandibles/jaws open out like a gate
- 2:23pm
- Teacher the bottom of the antennas, what is going on there? Is it like our shoulders?
Bugscope Team it's park of the beginning of the ball and socket
- Teacher There are "holes" above the mandebles could you explain the purpose of them.
Bugscope Team those are called anterior tentorial pits
Bugscope Team they are deep but do not open into the head
Bugscope Team they form a sort of skeletal structure that supports the exoskeleton
Bugscope Team they are much like 'sprues' that are used in sculpture, internal supports
- Teacher How do ants breath?
Bugscope Team they have pores in the sides of some of the body segments that are called spiracles and are there to let the insect breathe in and out, but they can also be closed to preserve moisture, for example
Bugscope Team or simply so the ants can hold their breath
Bugscope Team the spiracles attach, inside the body, to tubes called tracheae that feed oxygen to the internal components of the body
- Bugscope Team probably most of the setae we see now (the 'hairs') are mechanosensory -- for touch
- Bugscope Team let us know when you would like to move to another preset -- another place that we have saved on the stub
- Bugscope Team the presets can be seen on the lefthand screen
- 2:29pm
- Teacher Does the pattern on the "skin" of the ant serve a purpose?
Bugscope Team the ridges seem to make them shiny
Bugscope Team I am an ant biologist, so I probably should know this but am not completely certain. I know that ants use chemicals present on their skin as a means of communicating social status, so perhaps the ridges help carry these signals more efficiently in certain species. Thats just me speculating though
Bugscope Team they could also be non-adaptive
- Teacher We decided to now look at the mosquito head (male
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a male mosquito (they have frilly antennae)
- Bugscope Team the antenna we see comes out of a donut-shaped 'pedicel'
- Bugscope Team the little round things we see are the ommatidia -- the eye facets. the compound eyes are dried and collapsed
- Bugscope Team the female mosquito head looks a little better today
- 2:34pm
- Teacher What exactly are we looking at on the head
Bugscope Team The feather like structure is the main portion of the antennae, called the Flagellum. The doughnut shaped structure, as scott mention, is the pedicel and serves as the base of the antennae
Bugscope Team the feather like structure of the flagellum allows male mosquitoes to sense vibrations of female wings through an internal structure at the base of the antennae called Johnston's organ
- Teacher Then we will switch to the female one, lol
Bugscope Team yeah this is much better
Bugscope Team but the antennae of a female are not nearly as cool
- Bugscope Team You can see that the female's flagella aren't as fluffy as the males since they are not using them to find members of the opposite sex
- Teacher Is the background the mosquito's wings?
Bugscope Team the background is carbon tape i use to stick the insects down. you can see part of a wing to the upper right
- Bugscope Team the proboscis holds the fascicle, which is a bundle of cutting and siphoning mouthparts
- Bugscope Team the scales are like potato chips
- Bugscope Team ridged
- Teacher Can we zoom in on the wing
Bugscope Team the wings have scales on them, which we also find on the body...
- Bugscope Team you can see that much of the mosquitoes body is covered in scales. Mosquitoes are the only true flies that have scales.
Bugscope Team butterflies, moths, and silverfish also have scales
- 2:39pm
- Teacher What are the scales on the wings?
Bugscope Team they are actually modified setae as well
Bugscope Team One possible function they serve is to allow mosquitoes an easy means of escaping spider webs. The scales are easily detached, so if a mosquito gets caught it can simply rip its scales off and fly away unharmed
- Bugscope Team we also we microsetae on the surface of the wing
Bugscope Team "see microsetae"
- Bugscope Team I think the microsetae provide a microenvironment that helps hold the air.
- Bugscope Team some insect wings have many more microsetae, and they are thought to help protect against bacteria taking over
- Teacher where's the stinger/sucker of blood?
Bugscope Team here...
Bugscope Team it is a little difficult to make out, because it has a leg or arm behind it
Bugscope Team but the fascicle I mentioned earlier is inside of the tube we see with the conical tip
Bugscope Team the tube -- the proboscis -- is hollow and also has a slit all along its length
- Bugscope Team the part folds back
- 2:46pm
- Teacher the stinger/blodd sucker thing is not in the mouth?
Bugscope Team it is inside the tube we see now
Bugscope Team unfortunately it is rare that we get to see it out of the proboscis, which protects it
Bugscope Team the fascicle, which is inside, has four sharp cutting stylets, a siphon tube for blood and saliva, and another part I am not sure about
Bugscope Team the siphon tube sometimes looks like a calla lily, and sometimes it looks like a needle or actually a syringe needle
- Bugscope Team only the females suck blood
- Teacher ok, thanks! now onto the water bug head
- Bugscope Team they need the protein from the blood to be able to successfully lay their eggs
- Teacher cool - was that the scope?
- 2:53pm
- Teacher Where is the mouth/parts of mouth - is anything in it?
Bugscope Team The mouthparts are currently center screen. Beetles have chewing mouthparts and have mandibles that act similar to our jaws , but unlike our jaws their mandibles open sideways
Bugscope Team Beetles also have a labium and a labrum that act as a bottom and top lip, respectively. These, unlike the mandibles, are not turned sideways relative to our moutparts
Bugscope Team This type of mouthpart plan is thought to be ancestral in insects, with the sucking mouthparts of butterflies and mosquitoes being more derived.
- Teacher OK great, on to the fruit fly please
- Bugscope Team Scott, is Drosophila? there are also true fruitflies and I cant tell the difference under the SEM. Im assuming its Drosophila though
Bugscope Team *is this
- Student het
- 2:58pm
- Bugscope Team the part coming out at us near the bottom left is its sponging mouthpart
- Teacher we can make out an eye, but what else are we looking at???
Bugscope Team To the far left just next to the eye you can see one of the antennae. This type of fly has highly modified antennae that are reduced to bases with tiny bristles coming out of them
- Teacher what else is on the right
Bugscope Team Part of the thorax. you can make out the basal part of the front leg directly below the head too.
Bugscope Team An insects legs and wings attach to the thorax. it is the center of locomotion for insects
- Teacher thank you
- 3:04pm
- Bugscope Team their eyes allow them to see motion quickly, which is why they might be able to avoid a flyswatter or hand coming at them
- Teacher how does it see?
Bugscope Team many people mistakenly think that each of the facets of an insects eye individually forms an image. However, in reality they each acts like a single pixel of the whole image that the insect forms, so what they actually see more closely resembles an extremely low resolution photograph
- Teacher Thank you. I could spend all day just looking at these specimens! I know this is only a one hour session, so I will say thank you very much from all my students here. This has been a tremendous treat! I tell my kids that they should learn something every day; they learned a lot today and will never look at a bug the same way again! Thank you!
Bugscope Team No problem :) happy to have spread the love of insects around
- 3:10pm
- Bugscope Team glad you like them
