Connected on 2009-04-28 10:00:00
from , MA, US
- 9:53 am
- Bugscope Teamnice-looking pollen grains
- 10:00 am
- 10:06 am
- Bugscope Teamhello, welcome to bugscope!
- 10:13 am
- Bugscope TeamGood morning! We are done with the presets and ready for you to take over as soon as you wish.
- Bugscope TeamPresently K_Computer has control of the microscope.
- TeacherGreat! I am waiting for my students to join me...
- Bugscope Teamyou may try driving if you wish
- Bugscope Teamyay
- Bugscope Teamscales
- 10:20 am
- TeacherDo the other computers display what the driver is displaying?
Bugscope Teamyep
- TeacherThey are not at this moment
Bugscope Teamtry hitting refresh (F5), sometimes the sync gets out of wack
- Bugscope Teamthe only difference is only one person can see the controls at one time, we can switch controls to any student/guest logged in
- TeacherO.K. now they are all in sync
- Bugscope Teamyay
- Bugscope Teamcool :)
- Bugscope Teamthis is one of the multiple spiracles we saw on the centipede you sent
- 10:29 am
- TeacherThe students are here now!
- Bugscope Teamyay, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope TeamCool! Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Teamwe weren't sure what this is -- it looks like a grasshopper
- Teacherwe thought it was a cricket
- Bugscope TeamPlease feel free to ask us questions about what you see.
- Bugscope TeamThere's one of its serrated jaws.
- Bugscope Teamgood for cutting
- Bugscope Teamyou can change the mag, drive around to see other stuff we didn't already highlight for you
- Teacherare thet teeth?
- Bugscope Teamthey are as close to teeth as insects come
- 10:34 am
- Bugscope Teamthose are the edges of the jaw, which opens sideways, like a gate
- Bugscope Teamhere is the centipede you sent us
- Bugscope Teaminsects and many other arthropods have an exoskeleton -- their skeleton is on the outside
- Bugscope Teamand they don't really have teeth, although sometimes the jaws are hardened
- Bugscope TeamCentipedes and millipedes are not actually insects. They are in a different subphylum
- Bugscope Teamthe exoskeleton is made of chitin, which is sort of like what your fingernails are made of
- Bugscope Teamor think about the shell of a shrimp -- that is chitin
- TeacherTom wants to know if it has hair, and if those are eyes
Bugscope Teamwell, it's not really hair. those hair looking things are called setae (see-tee). setae help the insects to sense their environment, some setae are chemosensory, others are mechanosensory - setae help insects feel, smell, and interact with their enviornment
- Bugscope Teamhere is where the centipede's mouth is
- Bugscope Teamthe eyes are on the side of the head, and kind of hard to see now
- Bugscope Teamyou can see the antennae, though
- Bugscope Teamthe eyes are streamlined into the shape of the head
- 10:40 am
- Teacherhow many legs does a centipede really have
Bugscope Teamit depends upon the species...some have around 50, some have more or less.
- TeacherWhat is a spiracle?
Bugscope Teama spiracle is a breathing hole, usually found on the abdomen of an insect. insects don't breath through their mouths like people do, instead they have these spiracles on their bodies, and air goes in the spiracle and feeds the insect with needed elements, like nitrogen and oxygen
- Bugscope Teamthis is actually a millipede, because it has more than one set of legs per body segment.
- Bugscope Teamspiracles are a lot like our noses, they even have little hairs in them like nose hairs
- Bugscope Teamthe hairs help keep unwanted particles from getting in
- TeacherDoes a millipede have sharp claws?
Bugscope TeamThey wouldn't feel sharp if they crawled across you...they would mostly tickle. The points are too small for us to feel
- Bugscope Teamyes take a look!
- Bugscope Teamyou can see that they are sharp and pointy
- Bugscope Teamif you use click to center you can zero in one on of the claws
- 10:45 am
- TeacherMy center box is just a black square
Bugscope Teamtry refreshing the browser
- Bugscope TeamF5, refresh
- Bugscope Teamdo you have an image now?
- Bugscope Teamsometimes your browser doesn't update, and so it'll be black. if you click on F5 (refresh), that should always fix it.
- Bugscope Teamthere's one of the claws -- good job!
- Bugscope Teamnice...
- Bugscope Teamyou can use click to center again to center the image
- Bugscope Teamyou are driving a $600,000 microscope from your classroom
- Bugscope Teamif you get disoriented you can take the mag down a little
- Bugscope Teamif you get lost driving, try clicking on a preset if you want
- Bugscope Teamthe samples are all in a vacuum chamber, they are coated with a very fine layer of gold-palladium, and we are beaming electrons at them
- GuestRoman would like to know if an ant can feel how sharp the claws are.
Bugscope Teamyes an ant is small enough to appreciate how sharp the claws are
- Bugscope Teamthe images we see are the 'secondary' electrons coming back from the sample coating
- 10:50 am
- Bugscope Teammany arthropods have defensive chemicals or behaviors that help them avoid ants
- TeacherWhat is a beetle palp?
Bugscope Teamthey are found around the mouth and help the beetle taste/manipulate its food
- Bugscope Teamthis is one of the palps of a beetle you sent
- Bugscope Teamsee the mandibles (jaws)?
- Bugscope Teamnow you can also see on of the compound eyes
- TeacherYes!
- Bugscope Teamto the left
- Bugscope Teamand you can see the base of one of the antennae
- GuestTom asks, "What do beetles eat?"
Bugscope TeamThere are so many different beetles--they eat everything. They eat other insects, they eat dead insects and dead animal parts, they eat plants, they eat fruit, they eat old oatmeal, they eat wood, sticky candy---anything at all, you can bet there is a beetle that eats it!
- 10:55 am
- TeacherAaron wants to know what is around the bug?
Bugscope Teamwe have all the insects sitting on double stick carbon tape (it looks like it has bubbles) and then we also put a little dab of silver paint between the insect and the tape to help ground the sample (it looks like the smoother stuff in the background)
- Bugscope Teamnotice that we mount most 'bugs' on their backs, so the ventral side is up, dorsal side down
- Bugscope Teamthe ventral side is usually more interesting
- Bugscope Teamhere you can see the eye much better
- Bugscope Teamto the left
- GuestTom asks, "Does a beetle have a big brain or a little brain compared to other bugs?"
Bugscope TeamThey have very average sized brains. Most insects have the same general brain structure, what varies is the size of the parts of the brain that do different tasks. For example, a beetle that lives in dirt has a much smaller part of its brain that handles sight as compared to a bee or a fly with big eyes that needs to see where it is going as it is flying around. The beetle doesn't need to see because it lives in the dark in the dirt.
- Bugscope Teamthat is the end of the stage, you can even see the screw in the background
- 11:00 am
- Bugscope Teamnice driving mrs. Correira, you are doing a great job
- Guestcurtis wants to know what it feels like
- Bugscope Teamfruit fly brains are proportionately larger, for example, and much of the brain is devoted to processing visual signals -- to seeing
- TeacherAre these sensors, too?
- Bugscope Teamthat is a pulvillus pad on the claw that has tenent setae on it, which are used to allow the insect to walk on walls
- Bugscope Teamthis is a Nitidulid--a sap beetle
- Bugscope Teamthis is the beetle you sent us
- Bugscope TeamThe antennae give it away
- Bugscope Teamyes we can tell that unlike many other beetles, this one has the ability to cling to vertical surfaces
- 11:05 am
- Guestsam s. wants to know how many hairs it has
Bugscope Teamoften there are too many hairs (setae) to count
- Teacherwe could not ID this bug
- Bugscope Teama lot of insects, if you watch them walk, do not support themselves on their claws, but lower down on the tarsi, which is what the last several segments of the arm or leg are called
- Bugscope TeamLonghorned beetle!!!!
- Bugscope TeamHooray!!!!
- Bugscope Teamthis is one we slipped in on you -- Annie brought it back from camping this weekend
- Bugscope Teamsee the pollen grains?
- Teacherwe have had great devistation arond here from this critter!
- Bugscope TeamAnnie's thesis was/is on longhorned beetles.
- Bugscope Teamthose hairs (setae) stick through the exoskeleton, to nerves underneath, and that's how information is passed to the insects. if they didn't have those hairs, they wouldn't feel much of anything. the exoskeleton has no nerves, can't feel a thing
- Bugscope TeamThis is Molorchus bimaculatus--it doesn't have a common name. I collected it this weekend from a flowering tree.
- Guestzack wants to know what color markings it has on its back
Bugscope TeamThis beetle is dark brown and has lighted brown marks on its back
- GuestTom wants to know, "Can a beetle eat a praying mantis that is still alive?"
Bugscope TeamI am not sure if there are any beetles than are large enough to eat a living praying mantis. Not a full grown praying mantis anyway
- GuestRoman would like to know where you found the longhorned beetle.
Bugscope TeamI collected this beetle at Forest Glen park near Danville, IL this weekend
- Bugscope TeamThis beetle mimics another beetle...a beetle that is gross for most animal to eat
- TeacherYou can see why it is a longhorn!
- 11:10 am
- Bugscope Teamha beat me to it
- Bugscope TeamIt was feeding on pollen from a very smelly flowering tree
- Bugscope Teamthis is one of the claws of a dog tick
- Bugscope Teamthat is disquieting
- GuestTom says, "what is that round thing?"
- Bugscope Teamwe don't know what the round thing is but assume it helps the tick cling to its prey
- Bugscope Teamyay!
- Bugscope Teamthis is kind of cool, and we haven't seen pads like this before, on a tick, that I recall
- Bugscope TeamThis is an American dog tick, Dermacentor varabilis
- TeacherGood, we got it from a dog...
- 11:15 am
- Bugscope TeamI also collected this tick this weekend
- Bugscope Teamwell, one like it
- TeacherZack asks if this is hard tick
Bugscope TeamYup
- Bugscope Teamwe rarely see soft ticks
- TeacherAre deer ticks hard ticks too?
Bugscope TeamYes, deer tick, Ixodes species, are also hard ticks
- GuestRoman asks, "How do ticks communicate?"
Bugscope TeamThere is not much known about tick communication....very very very little actually. They probably locate each other by smell, like many arthropods do
- TeacherWhat are examples of soft ticks--are they in New England
- GuestTom would like to know what ticks use to suck blood.
- Guestcurtis wants to know where its eyes are
Bugscope Teamit doesn't have eyes; where the eyes would be, you'd think, there are little pits that we think are heat-sensory
- Guestconor wants to know how big a hole they make on their victims
Bugscope TeamThey make a relatively small hole. A tick bite often gets infected, which results in a larger wound than would just be the case if there was just a simple bite.
- 11:21 am
- Bugscope TeamWell, the brown dog tick, which is a type of soft tick is common in Illinois. Many soft ticks also feed on reptiles and amphibians.
- Bugscope Teamwhen the tick bites the two pieces on either side of the head fold down
- Bugscope Teamright now we are looking at on the left, part of the capitulum which sticks into your skin
- Bugscope Teamthe part on the right folds down
- Bugscope Teamyou could see those sharp recurved spines on the capitulum; on the opposite side was a rasp like surface that scrapes the hole
- Bugscope TeamOops, I was wrong about the brown dog tick...it is a hard tick too!
- GuestThe boys are asking about Lyme disease. Are there other diseases you can get from deer ticks and how dangerous are they?
Bugscope TeamTicks can vector a number of diseases. Other than Lyme disease, the most common tick borne disease is Rock Mountain spotted fever. Ticks can also vector other bacterial diseases such as borellia, tuleremia, etc. These diseases are typically more serious for domestic animals, like cows and rabbits and deer.
- Bugscope Teamyou can see how these guys do their job -- how they hunt
- Bugscope Teamlook at the hooks at their inner 'shoulders'
- 11:26 am
- Bugscope TeamDeer are not domestic animals...sorry
- Bugscope Teamwhen they want to feed, they will cling to grass with their legs up in the air, and when you or an animal walk by, their legs will grab on
- Bugscope Teamthey can hook themselves over leaves and have their arms reaching out to cling onto you as you pass by
- TeacherAre these not true insects? I only see 2 body parts and 4 sets of legs
- GuestWhy di ticks look almost like spiders, they both have eight legs. Tom is asking. :)
- Bugscope Teamthey're not insects
- Bugscope Teamthey are arachnids
- Bugscope Teamthey are arachids
- Bugscope Teamyou are right!
- Bugscope Teamexcept my spelling is wrong :)
- Bugscope Teamsometimes the juveniles have six legs, but they have eight as adults
- Bugscope Teamthey have a cephalothorax like spiders, don't they?
Bugscope TeamI am not sure if the terminology is the same...but yeah, pretty much
- Bugscope Teamthey do not jump or fly (thankfully)
- Bugscope Teamyay haltere
- Bugscope Teamthe opening to the upper left is the fruit fly's spiracle (breathing hole)
- 11:31 am
- Bugscope Teamthe ball-like thing is the haltere, which is a modified hindwing you find in Diptera, which from their name you know have only two wings
- Bugscope Teamnow we see the ommatidia that make up the compound eye, and the little bristles or setae that help the fruit fly sense windspeed, or wind direction
- GuestTom asks, "Why do flies have hairs on their eyes?"
Bugscope TeamThe hairs help the fly to sense direction in the wind...if you remove the hairs, the fly doesn't seem to know where to go.
- Bugscope Teamyou can also get a good view of the antenna, to the back of the image we see now
- Teachervery neat!
- GuestOh, thank you!
- GuestHow would someone actually remove the setae?
Bugscope Teamhahaha, some poor graduate student with a tiny tiny razor
- TeacherWhat is the stuff in the backround
- Bugscope TeamSeriously
- GuestLOL!
- Bugscope Teambehind all the insects you will see double stick carbontape and sometimes, in the smoother areas, silver paint to help keep the insects "glued" to the sample stub
- TeacherThat is so cool!
- Bugscope Teamscales!
- 11:36 am
- Guestwhat color is this butterfly
- Bugscope Teambutterflies, moths, mosquitos, silverfish, and very few other insects have scales
- TeacherWhat are those black lines?
Bugscope Teamthose are actually holes in the scales
- GuestTom asks, Why do the scales have holes?
Bugscope Teamwell, it reduces the mass of the scale, so it's lighter, that is thought to help the butterfly fly around easier
- Bugscope Teamyellow?
- Bugscope Teamthe round things are pigment granules
- Bugscope TeamIf it is yellow, it is probably a sulfur butterfly
- TeacherWhat color is the butterfly?
Bugscope Teamit was a yellow butterfly
- Bugscope Teamor a dog face butterfly
- Bugscope Teambutterfly and moth scales will often have both structural colors and colors that come from pigments
- Bugscope Teamhey hey!
- Bugscope Teamsalt!
- Bugscope Teamthis is salt from wendy's fast food restaurants
- Bugscope Teamthis is special salt
- Teacherlol
- Teacherwhy do they come in scares?
- Guestyunm
- Teacherdoes it look differently if you dissolve it and let it recrystallize?
Bugscope Teamyes often it does, exactly
- Bugscope Teamnormal salt does not have those cool sort of incised patterns
- 11:42 am
- TeacherWhy is it special salt?
- Bugscope Teamit loses the Aztec pattern and looks like normal cubic crystals
- TeacherWhen did you get this salt, asks Roman
- Bugscope TeamWith this microscope in environmental mode, we brought the chamber to 100% relative humidity and actually dissolved this salt before and recrystallized it. It was pretty cool
- Bugscope Teamwe don't know for sure but we think the salt has an anticaking agent in it that gives it that neat pattern
- Bugscope Teamthis batch of salt is a couple of years old
- TeacherNeat about the crystals
- Bugscope Teammosquito eye facets
- TeacherWhy do they look shrivelled up?
Bugscope Teaminsects have moisture in them, and when they die the moisture evaporates and thus parts of the insect can shrivel up
- Bugscope Teamthe ommatidia would normally be round, like tiny basketballs, but they are a little dried out
- Teacherthe detail is incredible!
Bugscope Teamelectron microscope rules!!!
- Bugscope Teamyou can see that they have a sort of substructure we don't see in many insect eyes
- Teacherwhy do they have dots on there eyeballs!?
- Bugscope Teamthose are submicron (nano) details
- TeacherWhat are the little dots all over each eye?
- 11:47 am
- Bugscope Teamwe don't really know what the dots are
- Bugscope Teamwe see them with moths and butterflies as well
- Bugscope Teambeetle head!
- Bugscope Teamthis is a japanese beetle we put in
- Bugscope Teamwhatever those dots are they are really really small :)
- TeacherIndeed!
- TeacherIt looks really scary!
Bugscope TeamOnly scary if you are a lawn or a rose bush
- Bugscope Teamsee the lamellated antennae? and the eyes on either side of the head? and the palps?
- TeacherWhat are all of those hairs!
Bugscope Teammany of the hairs we saw on the beetle were likely sensory -- mechanosensory -- so the beetle can feel when it has turned its head, for example
- TeacherWhat are those scales?
Bugscope Teamsorry I missed the scales
- 11:53 am
- Bugscope Teamsometimes we will often see stuff that doesnt belong like dirt or dust, which we call juju. That might be what we see on its limbs
- Bugscope Teamthis was your flying insect, i'm not sure what it is though
- Bugscope Teamso pretty!
- Bugscope Teamone of its antlers is missing
- TeacherThis is really neat, too
- Bugscope TeamIf we decrease the magnification, I may be able to tell what this is
- Bugscope Teamwe can show Annie the sample later, see if she can ID it
- Bugscope TeamAnnie is not here in this building. She is either in her lair or at work.
- Bugscope TeamI am working on corrections of my dissertation at my apartment
- Bugscope Teamthis is some kinda specialized palp
- TeacherI was wondering--how interesting!
- TeacherWe would like to extend our thanks to you for this wonderful experience!!!
- Bugscope TeamK we are going to have to give the microscope up at noon our time.
- Bugscope TeamThank You!
- Bugscope Teamthank you for all your great questions and for using bugscope with us!
- TeacherThank you again!
- Bugscope TeamYou are very welcome. We appreciate your questions
- Bugscope TeamThis has been fun for us.
