Connected on 2011-01-06 09:00:00
from Williamston, MI, US
- 7:29 am
- Bugscope Teamventing the 'scope, getting ready to place sample...
- Bugscope Teamsample is in 'scope and pumping down...
- 7:44 am
- Bugscope Teamgood morning Steve; good morning, Forrest! ;)
- Bugscope Teamthe microscope is pumped down, and I will start making presets in a few minutes. our session starts in about 75 minutes...
- Bugscope Teambut in the meantime please let me know if you have any questions
- 7:49 am
- 7:55 am
- 8:00 am
- Bugscope TeamSteve I will be back to finish the presets in a few minutes. It is 8 a.m. here.
- 8:24 am
- Bugscope Teamokay I am back at it. do let me know if you have questions
- 8:29 am
- 8:38 am
- 8:45 am
- Bugscope Teamcan you see me now?
- Teacherhello
- Bugscope Teamhi forrest!
- Bugscope Teamawesome
- 8:51 am
- Bugscope Teamyou have control
- Bugscope TeamPlease let us know when you have any questions...
- 8:56 am
- Bugscope TeamFeel free to drive the microscope -- you now have control of a $600,000 electron microscope.
- Bugscope Teamthis is the edge of one of the claws of the Monarch butterfly
- Bugscope Teamyou can see a couple of different types of pollen
- Bugscope Teamthe spikey pollen grains and the ones that look like deflated footballs
- Bugscope Teamyou can change the magnification to go up or down. if you go down, you can see where you are on the claw
- Bugscope Teamdid you know that insects have claws? ;)
- Bugscope Teamclaws are used to hold onto their food or plants
- Bugscope Teambecause all insects have six legs, they may have claws at the end of each of their six legs
- Bugscope Teamthese are not slides -- these are live images from the scanning electron microscope.
- TeacherThank you for showing our slides, we are looking at the 1st slide, monarch pollen can you give us more informatin about this slide
Bugscope Teamthe spiky spheres an the football shapes are pollen grains
- Bugscope Teamif you want you can take the magnification down to see where we are
- 9:01 am
- Bugscope Teamyou are looking at one of the claws, and if you click Magnification minus, at the top of the screen, as Cate says, you can see where you are.
- Bugscope Teamon the top of the image you will see the magnification controls
- Bugscope Teamthese are two different types of pollen
- Bugscope Teamthe spikey pollen and the deflated football-shaped pollen
- Bugscope Teamyou can see the two canoe shapes are the claws
- Bugscope Teamnow this is Cool! you can see where we were! this is one pair of claws!
- TeacherThat is really cool, and the claws look awesome
- Bugscope Teamthis is the end of the one of the legs of the Monarch butterfly
- Bugscope Teamyou may choose from any of the presets on the screen to the left of this viewing screen, and if you click on one of those thumbnail images, the microscope will drive to that place
- Teacherclaws are used for?
Bugscope Teamclaws are used by insects much the same way we use our hands -- the grasp things
- Bugscope Team'to' grasp things
- Bugscope Teambe sure to click on another preset and look somewhere else -- there are a lot of samples on here that you sent
- Bugscope Teamthey have claws on each leg as well
- Teacherwhy do they only hav e two claws?
Bugscope Teamif you click on the honeybee claw/tarsus, you can see that it seems to have more claws
- 9:07 am
- TeacherSo the claws on each leg, help collect food too?
Bugscope Teamthey can yes
- Bugscope Teamfor the bugs that eat other bugs it's usually the first 2 legs that hold onto the food
- Bugscope Teamlike praying mantises
- Bugscope Teamthere is a tendon inside the shaft of the tarsus (which is what each of the forearm segments is called) that opens and closes the claw
- Bugscope Teamthis is cool!
- Bugscope Teamthis is the face of a ladybug!
- TeacherDo lady bugs bite, what portion is posion?
Bugscope Teamyes they do bite. They bite with their jaws that you can see near the middle of the face. They are forked and open like a gate
- Bugscope Teamas for poison, they are poisonous. They do emit an odor that also makes them taste bad
- 9:13 am
- TeacherThe area of the right, look like a vaccum, are they claws? compound eyes behind them?
Bugscope Teamyes it does look like a vacuum nozzle. good eye! That is the maxillary palp, which is used to taste or help manipulate food
- Bugscope Teamin the palp are little taste buds called chemosensory setae. Setae (pronounced see-tee) is another name for bug hair
- TeacherCan we flip it over and look at the shell, what can you share about the exosceleton and dots on top
Bugscope TeamSorry but we can't easily flip it around. The insects are in a vacuum sealed chamber in the microscope
- Teacherokay looks like a finger
- Bugscope Teamthe spots wouldn't be visible either because we are really collecting a topographical image, not a light image. So things like color don't show up
- Bugscope Teama finger with a face :)
- Bugscope TeamThe background the insect is lying on is double stick carbon tape
- TeacherThe exo sc. looks like it covers most of the body parts? Protection?
Bugscope Teamyes the exoskeleton shell is very tough to other insects. It is made of chitin-- the same stuff our fingernails are made of
- Bugscope TeamI think their main protection is their red/yellow coloring and the dots-- things like that help ward off predators.
- 9:19 am
- Bugscope Teamthese are the little taste buds in the palp
- Bugscope Teamlittle hairs that collect chemical information from what they might eat
- TeacherWhat happens when they get wet?
Bugscope Teamthey are most likely going to be ok. They have breathing holes they can close so they can hold their breath for a little bit.
- Bugscope Teamsome water bugs will bring an air bubble down into the water with them that they hold around their abdomen, and they just breathe off that
- Teacherwhy are some smaller, do they get replaced like our hair? Who has more taste buds humans or insects?
Bugscope TeamThey don't grow back, but if the insect has another molt it can grow back any lost body parts are hairs
- 9:24 am
- Bugscope Teamthe smaller ones might do something else. Maybe their job is to help feel things for the insect since they can't do that very easily with their thick exoskeleton. It's like wearing a suit of armor on their bodies. They can't feel much. But some hairs are connected to nerves underneath that allow them to feel around
- Bugscope TeamI would think humans have more. Humans have about 10,000. That one palp didn't look like it had more than 50
- Teacherwhat can you tell us about this insect?
- Bugscope Teamit is a young insect. They sometimes don't look like their adult counterpart (like caterpillars and butterflies). They have simpler structures, like their eyes
- Bugscope TeamThis insect has simple eyes instead of compound. The simple eyes are the little round dots
- Bugscope TeamSimple eyes don't see as well. It also has big jaws- maybe for eating plants
- Teachercan you tell us more about the simple eye?
- Bugscope Teamthis insect, which we think is a larval true bug, has four or five eyes on each side of its head -- it's like a caterpillar
- Bugscope Teamthose eyes are called 'stemmata,' and they don't let the insect larva see very well -- they are not as good as compound eyes, for example
- Bugscope Teamit's a little desiccated (dried up), meaning its body is soft
- Bugscope Teamthis little guy does have very fierce looking jaws
- 9:29 am
- Bugscope Teamyou can see its six legs, folded in front of its body, to the left of the head
- Bugscope Teamthe head is large, and that is probably because much of the inside of the head is taken up by muscles that make those jaws work
- Bugscope Teamthe jaws resemble those of a borer -- one of those insects that burrows into wood
- Bugscope TeamHi Chris!
- Teacherwe can't get the chrysalis to show so we are moving on
- Bugscope Teamnow we see some eyes that work very well
- GuestHi!
- Bugscope Teamhere is your honeybee
- Bugscope Teamyeah I am sorry it looks like the chrysalis preset is not working. if you'd like I can drive directly to it.
- Bugscope Teamnow we're on the true bug again
- Bugscope Teamyou can see its compound eyes, on either side of its head
- Bugscope Teamand this! yay this is the coolest!
- Bugscope Teamthis wasp is the green iridescent insect you sent us
- Bugscope Teamvery cool
- Bugscope Teamthis is a tiny blue wasp that Evan, from your class, found and sent
- TeacherDo you know the name?
- 9:34 am
- TeacherThank you for showing it from Evan
- Bugscope Teamoops sorry as Cate said -- iridescent green
- Bugscope Teamwe don't recognize the species -- there are thousands of tiny parasitic wasps
- TeacherHow long can they live?
Bugscope Teamusually they live for several weeks, or one full season, in a temperate region
- Bugscope Teamyou can see its stinger, which is blunt and scary
- Bugscope Teamand you can see its compound eyes, as well as its three ocelli -- the simple eyes that many flying insects have
- Bugscope Teamthe closest identifying wasp i could find was a type of parasitic wasp that preys on maggots or the pupae of moths and butterflies
- Bugscope Teambees and wasps are both Hymenoptera -- related to ants. and they both have four wings, compared to flies (Diptera), which have two wings.
- Bugscope Teamwell it's easy to tell apart the bee mimics that are flies. You just look at their antennae. If they are pads- they are flies. If they are stalks- they are wasps/bees
- TeacherWhat is the center part between the claws?
Bugscope Teamthat is where the arolium is, or sometimes the pulvillus. either of those helps the insect cling to a surface
- Guesthow can you tell the difference between a wasp and a bee?
Bugscope Teamwe cannot always tell, and sometimes we get bee mimics that are actually flies
Bugscope Teambees tend to be fatter and are seen around flowers. wasps are skinnier and are seen around people's trash- like when you go to the zoo and you see a bunch of wasps around the eating area
- 9:40 am
- Bugscope Teamyou can see that this claw is different -- it has more 'tines' than that of the Monarch
- Bugscope TeamI just recentered this because it had drifted since we made the preset
- Bugscope Teamthe bee tongue is called a glossa, and it is long and flexible
- Bugscope Teamyou can see what looks like a mold spore on the shaft
- TeacherIs that pollen on one side?
- Bugscope Teamit looks like pollen, but because there is a lot of mold on this bee, and because the spikes are very short, we think it is more likely a mold spore than a pollen grain
- Bugscope Teamif you take the magnification down from here you can see where we are on the face of the bee
- Bugscope TeamBees will also use their tongues like a cat to lick their fur to keep themselves clean. They'll also lick and clean each other and their mother the queen.
- Bugscope Teambees are very hairy, and they appear to have fur
- TeacherLooks like a giant insect from James and the Giant Peach
- Bugscope Teamthe hairs are actually setae, which can have a number of functions including taste, feel, and hot/cold sensing
- 9:45 am
- Bugscope Teamthis is the head of the mealworm
- TeacherWe fed our apples and bran, is that a good source of food for them?
- Bugscope Teampeople often do use wheat bran
- TeacherSome of our mealworms didn't turn into a beetle, any suggestions why?
Bugscope Teamnot sure -- maybe they were picky eaters, and maybe the temperature changes in the room affected them. it is hard to tell
- Bugscope Teamyou can see the jaws in the center of the face, and you can see where it once had very short antennae, I think, that are broken off
- TeacherHow many legs do the MW have? We thought we saw more like a centepede?
Bugscope Teambecause they are insects, they have only 6 true legs. but they may also have what are called prolegs
- 9:51 am
- Bugscope Teamthis is like a caterpillar, and it will eventually turn into a darkling beetle. caterpillars have six legs plus a number of matched pairs of prolegs that have little hooks within them called crochets
- TeacherWe also noticed they have a stong scent to smells, thoughts
Bugscope Teamnot sure about that. did you change the bedding often?
- TeacherWhat can you tell us about your job, why did you decide to do this, what is your most unusual insect found?
- Bugscope Teamwe are microscopists. And I decided to do this because I get to work with lots of areas of science. We do bugscope on average 2 times a week. The rest of the time we help users image their samples or we image samples for companies
- Bugscope TeamI think some of the coolest insects are weevils, but I also kind of like owlfly larvae, and I think leafcutter ants are remarkable. leafcutter ants are farmers; they grow different kinds of mold/fungus to eat
- Bugscope TeamAn interesting insect we once received from a school was a giant millipede (which aren't really insects). At first it didn't seem very interesting, but then when we put it in the microscope for the school we found it was covered in mites
- Bugscope Teamwe like what we do, and it is always a little different
- Bugscope Teamsj has a background in biology and english and I have a background in physics
- TeacherThank you for all your dialog and information
- 9:56 am
- Bugscope Teamwe get to see lots of cutting-edge research -- we work with biologists but also materials people, as well as sometimes even architects
- Bugscope TeamThank You!
- Bugscope TeamI am racing to a meeting...
- Bugscope TeamThis was fun, and we hope to see you back next year!
- Bugscope TeamBye!
- Bugscope Teamyou can see your chat and images from today on your member page found at https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-111
