Connected on 2008-08-25 10:00:00
from Hoisington, KS, US
- 9:54 am
- Bugscope Teamgood morning!
- Bugscope Teamwould you like to log in as teacher?
- Bugscope Teamrather than as a student?
- Bugscope TeamPepper just gave you control of the microscope.
- 10:01 am
- Bugscope Teamplease let us know if you have any questions or any problems using the 'scope
- 10:08 am
- StudentI am logged on as a teacher
- Bugscope Teamfor some reason our software awarded you a student login but Pepper fixed you up
- Bugscope Teamthis is the housefly
- Bugscope Teamin profile
- Bugscope Teamif you drive to the left there is some sort of hymenopteran
- Bugscope Teamnote that you can click on amy preset to get to what it depicts
- Bugscope Teamthat we did not recognize
- Studentwhat are we looking now
Bugscope Teamthis is some sort of hymenopteran (like a bee)
- Bugscope Teamit is pretty cool looking but we are not sure -- like Pepper says it seems to be a small bee
- Studentwhat are the hairs
Bugscope Teamthey are just that-- hairs! but we call them setae (or seta for singular) on insects
- Bugscope Teamthe hairs (setae) are usually sensory
- Bugscope Teamthey give the insect information about its environs
- Bugscope Teamsome setae are mechanosensory -- like a cat's whiskers
- 10:13 am
- Bugscope Teamand some setae are chemosensory and pick up smells from the air
- Studenthow big is this insect in real life
- Bugscope TeamI think less than a cm long
- Bugscope Teamyou can see here that it has four wings
- Bugscope Teamyou can see the scalebar in the lower left corner says 1 mm
- Studenthow many eyes does this insect have
Bugscope Teamwe can't tell, but it probably has 2 compound eyes and 3 simple eyes called ocelli
- Bugscope Teammost flying insects have a total of 5 eyes
- Bugscope Teamthe compound eyes have hundreds of facets called ommatidia
- Bugscope Teamlike flies, bees, and wasps
- Studentare we seeing the eye
- Bugscope Teamthe facets are like individual lenses
- Bugscope Teamyes near the middle of the screen is one of its compound eyes
- Bugscope Teamthe eye is almost in the middle of the image
- Bugscope Teamone of the compound eyes, that is
- Bugscope Teamyou can use click to center to get to it, and then you can take the mag up
- Bugscope Teamyou can see the pattern all of the ommatidia make
- 10:18 am
- Bugscope Teamclose-packing shapes them into hexagons
- Bugscope Teamthe Adjust function allows you to fix the contrast/brightness on the screen
- Studenthow many lenses does it have
- Bugscope Teamlooks like we could safely say a few thousand
- Bugscope Teampeople have counted them in some species
- Bugscope Teamit is easier to count in ants, because their compound eyes are smaller
- Bugscope Teamyou can zoom in and adjust the focus if you want
- Studenthow many eletron microscopes do you have
Bugscope Teamwe have 2-- a scanning electron microscope, which we are using now, and a transmission electron microscope
- Bugscope Teamyou can see the jaws here...
- Bugscope Teameach microscope has its own room, and air, water, nitrogen, fitlered electrical power
- Bugscope Teamfiltered..
- Studentwhat kind of food do you think this insect eats
- Bugscope Teamprobably something in liquid form
- Bugscope Teampollen maybe
- 10:23 am
- Bugscope Teamthe mouth is confusing -- or maybe as Pepper said it eats pollen
- Studenthow large are your microscopes
- Studenthow expensive are they
Bugscope Teamyou are controlling a $600,000 microscope right now. the TEM (transmission electron microscope) was considerably more expensive
- Bugscope Teamthe SEM is like a large desk with a taller component on the side
- Bugscope Teamand the TEM is much taller and has a high tension tank and a power supply
- Studenthow many schools do this each year and how many insects do they send you
- Bugscope Teamthey really do fill a small room
- Bugscope Teamnot all schools send us insects. Thank you for sending yours by the way! We had some leftovers that we can use for other schools
- Bugscope Teamduring the school year we will have, often, three sessions a week
- Bugscope Teamtypically they send between 3-10 different insects. The number varies.
- Bugscope Teamwe have had over 350 sessions since we started in March 1999
- Bugscope Teamsometimes we will get big bugs like cockroaches or cicadas which we can't really use on our stubs because they are so big
- Bugscope Teamwe have more per year now
- Bugscope Teamthis is the head of the grasshopper
- Bugscope Teamwe could not put the whole dude on the stub -- it was too big
- Bugscope Teamyou can see one of the simple eyes now
- Bugscope Teamthere are usually three simple eyes, which are called ocelli, as Pepper had told us earlier
- Bugscope Teamthe edge of the world
- 10:28 am
- Bugscope Teambelow there is a screw that holds the stage on
- Bugscope Teamthe eye kind of looks like a golfball
- Bugscope Teamoh no!
- Bugscope Teamthe body is missing!
- Studentwhat do you see
- Bugscope Teamscott is just playing around
- Studentdo we only have the head
- Bugscope Teamto the south and a little west is a junebug
- Bugscope Teamyeah we had to make a choice of what to keep -- the sample stage is only about 50 mm in diameter
- Bugscope Teamyou can imagine if we had a cicada for example it would be all you could see
- Studentis this the mouth
Bugscope Teamyes, it looks like it is pretty dry since it is cracking
- 10:33 am
- Studentwho built the microscope
Bugscope TeamFEI Philips manufactures the one we own, but there are other companies like Hitachi
- StudentDo they need batteries or do you plug it in
- Bugscope Teamsome insects ooze hemolymph as a defense against predators, like ants, and we may be seeing some of that on the grasshopper's face
- Bugscope Teamthe microscope runs on a 220-volt circuit, and some of that power is kicked up to as much as 30,000 volts
- Studentis this what an ant using to clean itself
- Bugscope Teamthis is how the ant keeps clean
- Bugscope Teamyes!
- Bugscope Teamsorry I was writing and you beat me to it
- Studenthow many lenses does an ant have
- Bugscope Teamthey often clean their antennae, which are much more important, generally, than their eyes
- Bugscope Teamsome ants have no eyes at all. The average is around 20-50 lenses. But some can have more than that. It just depends on how much that species of ant relies on its eyes
- Studenthow do the ants carry their food
- Bugscope Teamwell it is handy to have six legs so you can use two of them to carry things and four to walk, but they might normally carry things in their jaws
- Bugscope Teamnow you can see the eyes
- 10:39 am
- Bugscope Teamthis has a more complex compound eye than we normally see
- Bugscope Teamyou can imagine that it has a few hundred ommatidia between the two eyes
- Studenthow do you tell the difference between a boy and girl
- Studentwhy does the antennae seem to be bent
Bugscope Teamants have elbowed (bent) antennae
- Studentwhat is ammatidia
Bugscope Teamommatidia are the eye facets
- Bugscope Teamthat is how you can tell an ant is an ant and not a termite of some sort
- Bugscope Team a lot of ants are male
- Bugscope Teambut we don't have an easy way to tell just looking at them
- Studentare all the worker ants males
- Bugscope TeamI think that is correct
- Studentdo bugs have brains
- Bugscope Teamthe worker ants are female
- Studentdo ants have ears
- Bugscope Teamthey are sterile though
- Studentto girl ants have wings
Bugscope Teamthe winged ants are fertile adults, both male and female.
- Studenthow do ants communicate
- Bugscope Teamyes they have brains -- a fruit fly's brain is mostly devoted to processing visual signals
- Bugscope TeamI am sorry -- I got that completely backwards about the worker ants
- Bugscope Teamants communicate using their antennma
- 10:44 am
- Bugscope Teamantennae
- Bugscope Teamthe antennae include chemosensors, and a lot of the information ants get is in the form of chemical triggers
- Studenthow big is their brain
- Studentdo ants have hearts and what color is their blood
- Bugscope Teamthe brain is pretty small. it has to share space with the muscles that control the jaws
- Studentcan we see the ants mouth
- Bugscope Teamtheir blood is clear, generally, and it is called hemolymph
- Bugscope Teami tried to get the ant to show its mouth better, but it was kind of hidden at that angle
- Bugscope Teamthis is the june bug's claw
- Bugscope Teamthey have an open circulatory system, so they don't have a heart quite the way we think of one
- Studentwhere was the microscope built
- Bugscope Teamyeah you could not see the mouth very well
- Bugscope Teamthis one was built in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands
- 10:49 am
- Bugscope Teamhttp://www.itg.uiuc.edu/ms/equipment/microscopes/esem/
- Studentwhere was the first micrscope built
- Bugscope Teamthat is from our equipment page and shows a photo of the microscope
- Studentare we seeing joints
- Studentare we seeing hairs
- Bugscope Teamthe first electron microscope was built in Russia, or at least by a Russian scientist, in about 1931
- Bugscope Teamyes to both
- Bugscope Teamthere are different segments to the leg and those spikes are setae
- Bugscope Teamflies are 2 different parts to their antennae. they have the part that looks like a branch and then they have the part that looks like a flap
- Bugscope Teamthe branch part is shown really well in this fly
- Bugscope Teamthe first microscope was built, it is thought, in Holland as well, in the 17th century, by van Leeuwenhoek
- Bugscope Teamyes usually we do not get a good image of the antennae
- Studentwhat is the heaviest insect
Bugscope TeamThe heaviest insect is probably the goliath beetle (Goliathus goliath) of Africa, which is reputed to weigh up to 100 grams (more than a small bird)!
- Bugscope Teamlobster
- 10:55 am
- Studentare lobster insects
- Bugscope Teamsince lobsters are not really insects
- Bugscope Teamlobsters are crustaceans and have two pairs an antennae, among other differences
- Bugscope Teamfairy flies (a type of wasp) are less than 0.4 mm in length, and these are regarded as the smallest insect
- Studentwhat is the lightest insect
- Bugscope Teamthe fairy fly would be a good contender
- StudentThank you so much for allowing us to see our insects you did a nice job answering all our questions
- StudentI think our time is up
- Bugscope Teamthank you for all of your great questions
- Bugscope TeamThank You!
- Bugscope Teamyou can access your transcript and saved images at your member homepage located: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-061/
- 11:00 am
- Bugscope Teamand of course you can email bugscope if you have anymore questions
- Bugscope TeamWe are logging off. Thank you and see you next year!
