| Description | We are interested in structural diversity in insect antennae. On the macro level, our students will be taught to separate butterflies and moths by antenna morphology. We would like to expand this exploration into the microscopic world. Thus we are excited about your electron-microscope on the Net. We would like our students to collect the specimens for this project. They will first examine them on the dissecting scopes that we provide, and then send them to Bugscope to view at a higher magnification. The students will be allowed to pick what they want to view on your microscope, but we will encourage them to take a comparative approach (for example sending representative specimens from one order, a closely related order, and a distantly related order). We are a summer camp funded by a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Grant and a National Science Foundation Grant issued to J.W.O. Ballard (Population Biology). It is a three week residential camp that houses 20 students from all over America, 10 males and 10 females. Our minority students (14) include African-, Asian- and Native-Americans. Our outreach to colleagues and school districts will be through the students and the web page that they make throughout the three week program. The Web page will give the students the opportunity to disseminate information gathered over the summer. The student will write a description of this project, illustrated with the electron micrograms created by Bugscope, and posted on the web page. |
