Connected on 2007-11-09 09:00:00
from , WI, US
- 1:13 pm
- Teacherhi there- our next class is almost here....
- Bugscope TeamHello Teach!
- Bugscope Teamhello!
- Bugscope TeamWe redid the presets for this afternoon.
- TeacherI noticed- thank you!
- Bugscope TeamAlso added some fruit flies and cleaned the millipede up a little.
- Teacherour morning class was really excited about the session.....
- Bugscope Teamis that you cruising around Ms H?
- Teacheryes it is....now that I'm a pro :)
- Bugscope Teamthis is a spiracle on the fruit fly next to the haltere
- Bugscope Teama spiracle is a breathing hole
- Bugscope TeamAnnie are there like two spiracles per body segment?
- Bugscope Teamone on each side?
- Bugscope Teamthe blood of insects doesn't carry oxygen, so they have spiracles all over the body because each individual cell has to get its own oxygen supply
- Bugscope TeamUmm, I think so. I am not sure for all insects
- Teacherare you enjoying answering each other's questions
- Bugscope Teamha ha, yes
- 1:18 pm
- Bugscope Teamwe have to entertain ourselves, and Annie is the expert bugologist
- Bugscope Teamsomething
- Teacherwe are having some issues getting our second set of computers going
- Bugscope Teamwhat are they not doing?
- Teacherwe are using a different set of computers that aren't in the computer lab....they are slower
- Teacherwe are going to try something else.....
- Bugscope Teamthat could be part of it -- they will run differently when they are slower -- the software modifies itself a bit for slower confusers.
- TeacherI'm going to log off and project what I have so we can at least see what I see
- Bugscope Teamthat sounds good -- many of our participants work that way
- Bugscope Teambrb
- 1:25 pm
- Bugscope Teamokay
- Bugscope TeamTeach you are back!
- Teacherwe are back!
- Bugscope TeamAre you projecting?
- Teacheryes I am
- Bugscope TeamVery big spiracle...
- Bugscope Team*waves to class*
- Teacherwhat are the hairy things around it
Bugscope Teamthe hairy things are just that hairs! but on insects, we have to call them setae (or seta singular)
- Teacher*waves back*
- Teacherwho is the entemologist?
Bugscope Teamannie is our bugologist
- Bugscope TeamIf you go to Magnify, to the right, you can take the mag down, and down, and see where you are on the fly
- Bugscope Teaminsects are a lot hairier than they seem
- Bugscope Teamthe hairs protect the opening from dust
- Bugscope Teamthey keep big things from getting sucked in
- Bugscope Teamnow the thing that looks like a boxer's speedbag? -- that is the haltere
- Bugscope Teamthere is the fruit fly
- Bugscope Teamah now you can see the whole fruit fly, almost
- Bugscope Teamthis is the dragonfly eye
- Teacherwhat is the stuff on the eye
Bugscope Teamsometimes there will be dirt on it, or what seems to be lint (the stringy stuff)
- Bugscope Teamnow we are looking at the ommatidia -- the individual facets of the compound eye
- 1:30 pm
- Bugscope Teamand we see a lot of dirt
- Teachercan you clean a bugs eye
- Teacherdo they have eyelids....can they blink
- Bugscope Teamwe always tell our participants that insects are hairier and dirtier than you would expect
- Bugscope Teamyou have probably seen a housefly clean it eyes
- Bugscope Teamexcept when we look at ants, i expect them to be caked in mud, but they seem decently clean
- Teacherhave you ever been seriously injured from an insect
- Bugscope Teamwe could blast it gently with air
- Bugscope Teambtw, annie went AFK for a few, but should be back shortly
- Bugscope TeamI have been stung a few times but nothing bad
- Teacherwhat are your favorite arthropod movies
- Bugscope TeamAnnie might have heard of some pain stories from her bug friends if nothing bad happened to her
- Bugscope TeamAnd I used to get a lot of spider bites but they are not insects
- Bugscope TeamI liked The Fly with Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum.
- Bugscope TeamAnd I remember Mothra when I was little.
- Bugscope TeamI dont know what mine would be, but that is a good question
- Bugscope Teami think i always liked arachnaphobia
- Bugscope TeamThis is a tangle of limbs from the millipede.
- Bugscope TeamFor some reason the millipede had some oily stuff on it, and I tried cleaning it over the interim.
- Bugscope Teamthe millipede you sent us had a lot of stringy limbs, i wonder if it ever tripped on himself
- Bugscope TeamYou can always take the mag lower to see where you are.
- Bugscope Teama little lower anyway
- Teacherinsect humor......
- 1:35 pm
- Bugscope Teamthe samples are in a vacuum chamber, coated with gold-palladium, and we are beaming electrons at them and getting these images back, in real time
- Bugscope Teamyou are driving a $600,000 microscope.
Bugscope Teamdont worry we wont charge you if you break it XD
- Bugscope Teamthere is the head, its eye is not as big around its head like the fruit fly's. this means that it doesnt depend on the eye as much
- Bugscope Teamyou can see the eye to the left, and those nasty fangs.
- Bugscope Teamtheses are some bad little dudes
- Bugscope Teamthese
- Teacherwhat do they use the fangs for, since they are herbivores
- Bugscope Teammaybe they are for defense
- Bugscope Teamprobably to help cut and shovel food into its mouth
- Bugscope Teamor that too
- Bugscope Teamthis is one of those critters that you see running along the walls -- it looks like a living mustache.
- Bugscope Teamthis is a centipede then...a house centipede
- Teacherwe caught it on the wall of our school, in fact
- Bugscope Teamthey can get pretty big
- Bugscope Teami just do not like them
- Teacherwhy would it be a centipede instead of a millipede
- Bugscope Teamthey are considered a beneficial arthropod because they eat other insects
- Teacherabout how many insects have you collected for bugscope
- Teacherwhat is the largest insect that you have collected
Bugscope TeamThe largest insect I have collected was a black witch moth that I found dead at a gas station in Costa Rica. I had a wingspan of about 8 inches
- Teacherwhat is the most unusual insect you have collected
Bugscope TeamI don't really know what the most unusual insect I have collected would be. I collected some crazy stick insects in Costa Rica, and have seen some amazing owlflies and ant lions. And lots of huge beautiful moths. And lots of longhorned beetles, of course
- Bugscope TeamA centipede has one pair of legs per body segment and a millipede has more than one
- Bugscope Teamyeah I always call them millipedes because they don't look like what I think of as a centipede.
- 1:41 pm
- Bugscope TeamAnnie is the collector.
- Teacherdo you have the antennae of the butterfly
- Bugscope Teamno i didnt see that...i might have mistook it for a limb of the centipede dude
- Bugscope TeamWe just got a pseudoscorpion the other day, and that was the most unusual critter we have seen for awile.
- Teachercool
- Teacherwould it be easier for bugs to move if they had a backbone?
Bugscope TeamInsects wear their "bones" on the outside of their bodies. Their exoskeleton is a strong tube with muscles on the inside...they are the opposite from us! If they had a backbone it would completely change their anatomy and probably their ability to do all the insect-type things they do (like fly and live in huge colonies and occupy many different niches)---it is a hard question to answer. It would be a very different world if insects had backbones
- Bugscope TeamOkay this is what is called a house centipede, and they use their fangs -- they eat other insects.
- Teacherhow big is your microscope?
Bugscope Teamit is about the size of a desk, there is a picture of it on our website
- Bugscope Teamthey have their bones on the outside; if they had a backbone they would be so very different
- Bugscope Teamthis is the face of the cicada
- Bugscope Teamthe microscope has its own air, water, electricity, nitrogen, its own room...
- TeacherI'm lost looking for the overall head
Bugscope Teamdecrease the magnification
- Bugscope Teamyou know Teach the head is so big that we cannot see all of it at once
- Bugscope Teamthe eyes are to the northeast and northwest
- 1:46 pm
- Teacherare we able to see the butterfly antennae
- Bugscope Teamthis part of the head functions like a pump so that the cicada can suck juice out of plants that it sticks its proboscis into
- Bugscope TeamTeach the best antennae today are on the beetle. We didn't mount the butterfly today -- I am sorry.
- Teacheris that why we can't fly, because we don't have exoskeletons
Bugscope Teamwell, we are certainly heavy and not very aerodynamic...and we don't have wings. Insect cuticle is lightweight, flexible and strong. And insects are very small. I think that would make it easier for them to evolve flight
- Teachershould I go to the beetle head to see the antennae - number 10?
- Bugscope Teamyeah try it!
- Bugscope Teamthere is a variety of changes you would have to make in order to be able to fly.
- Bugscope Teamit's not just that you would need an exoskeleton
- Bugscope Teamto some insects the air feels thick, like water does to us
- Teacherwe can't change the image for some reason
- 1:51 pm
- Bugscope Teamnow you can see the antennae on either side of the head
- Teachercan cicadas fly
Bugscope TeamAs adults cicadas do fly
- Bugscope Teamyes the can fly, but not super well
- Bugscope Teamthey are kind of dumb..they will fly into things
- Bugscope Teamthey are not very aerodynamic
- Teacherwhat direction are the antennae
- Bugscope Teamthey are left and right, at the edges of the head
- Teacherwhy is a cockroach's insides white
Bugscope TeamAll that white goo is called fat body.
- Teacherdo you have control of the microscope as well?
- Bugscope Teamyouve opened a cockroach up?
- TeacherBrett has crushed one
- Bugscope Teamwe can drive the microscope if we want to but when we do bugscope we want the class to understand that they have control
- Bugscope TeamIt is fat
- Bugscope Teamyuck, because i wouldnt want to willingly open up a cockroach is all
- Teacheris that why cicada's adult span is so short, becuase they fly into things
Bugscope TeamCicadas have a very long lifespan actually, most of their life they are underground sucking juice from tree roots. They don't live long as adults because they don't eat as adults, they are living on their food stores
- Bugscope Teamand the classroom controllers can make the same mistakes that we do -- you can go out of focus or off the stage, etc.
- Bugscope TeamIt serves several functions: it stores energy, like our fat; it can store toxins so that the toxins don't affect the insect
- Teacheris it true that cockroaches are the only insects that can survive a nuclear bomb
- Bugscope Teamother insects will certainly be able to survive as well
- Bugscope Teamthe less speciallized they are the better they will fare
- Teacherlike what? and why???
Bugscope TeamI think it depends on whether the insects food source survives. If all the flowers are obliterated, then nothing that lives on pollen or nectar or fruit will be able to survive. Cockroaches (and silverfish and roly polies and earwigs) and other generalists will survive because they will have garbage and rotten things to eat. And then the predatory insects will survive becaue they will eat the generalist insects
- 1:57 pm
- Bugscope Teamcockroaches are very streamlined and can live in a huge diversity of place/conditions
- Bugscope Teamthat also makes cockroaches less interesting to image in the electron microscope, because they do not have lots of specialized functionalities
- Bugscope Teamlike for example a tick, or a louse.
- Teacherwhat is the difference between a bumble bee and a honey bee
Bugscope TeamThey are in different tribes within the insect family Apidae. Honey bees are smaller, less fuzzy, they have larger nests, they have barbed stingers. Bumble bee colonies only live one year (typically), they have few individuals in a nest, they have unbarbed stingers, they are not domesticated, they are larger (generally) and they are fuzzier
- Teacherwhat about a bee and wasp
- Bugscope Teamkind of a long winded answer, that was
- Bugscope Teama fruit fly is more radiation resistant than a roach according to wikipedia
- Teachercan you move the microscope for us....the kids want to see you do it
- Bugscope Teambut i understand what annie is saying about what survives longer after plantlife is gone
- Teacherwhat are the holes...spiricles
- 2:02 pm
- Bugscope Teamthese holes are where things fell off it looks like
- Bugscope Teamthose holes are places where mandibular and maxillary palps broke off
- Teacherwhat kind of things
- Bugscope Teamthe palps are sort of like limbs that are used for manipulating food, and tasting it
- Bugscope Teamanother long-winded answer
- Bugscope Teamwhen you see video of an insect eating, and all of those things are moving at once...
- Bugscope Teamwhen you have a barbed stinger, it is meant to fall off and stay in you
- Bugscope Teamthe unbarbed stinger means the bee can sting you multiple times
- Bugscope Teamor wasp
- Bugscope Teamit also means that the bee or wasp doesn't not die after it stings
- Bugscope Teamyou can see the eye to the right, and the jaws folded over each other in the middle
- Bugscope Teamthis is on the fruit fly
- Bugscope Teamit is part of the haltere, which stabilizes the fruit fly as it flies
- Bugscope Teamthese are hypertrophied mechanosensors on the haltere
- Bugscope Teamthey sense their own motion with respect to the wings and modify their own motion in time with the wings -- they function sort of like gyroscopic stabilizers
- Bugscope Teamflies are among the only insects with only two wings
- Bugscope Teammost insects have two full sized sets of wings
- Bugscope Teamnow you can see the whole haltere, right ion the center
- 2:07 pm
- Bugscope Teamlike a punching bag
- Teacherwhat is the average temperature of an insects blood
Bugscope TeamInsect blood is the same temperature as the air. There are some insects that do generate heat with their muscles when they fly.
- Bugscope Teamsometimes, on a four-winged insect like a wasp, we can see the little hooks they use to make the fore- and hindwings stick together in flight
- Bugscope TeamI think the temperature will be the same as the external air
- Bugscope Teamthe blood, which is clear, not green like I usually tell people, is called hemolymph
- Teacherso why don't they freeze
Bugscope TeamSome insects do freeze...that is why we don't see a lot of adult insects in the winter. Insects usually hibernate in some way during the coldest months. There are some insects have have antifreeze proteins in their blood that allow them to live through the winter.
- Bugscope TeamThey can freeze. But sometimes they are cool with it : ) they just unfreeze and wake up again
- Teacherwe need to go.....thanks so much for everything...we'll do this again next year
- Bugscope Teamhey are we lost?
- Bugscope Teamall right, well we look forward to seeing you again, and i hope you all had fun!!
- Bugscope TeamI just moved us...
- Bugscope Teamthank you all
- 2:12 pm
- Bugscope TeamThank You!
- Bugscope Teamyou can log into your home page and find the images you saw today and a script
- Bugscope TeamI'll have alex send you an email about the images and the script