Connected on 2012-06-16 15:00:00
from Whatcom, Washington, United States
- 1:57 pm
- Bugscope Teamsample is pumping down
- 2:09 pm
- 2:14 pm
- 2:19 pm
- Bugscope Teamnow making presets
- 2:26 pm
- 2:31 pm
- 2:38 pm
- Bugscope Teamwe are ready to roll
- 2:47 pm
- Bugscope Teambe right back...
- Bugscope Teamokay back!
- 2:52 pm
- Bugscope TeamMayfly
- 2:58 pm
- TeacherWe are here! Hello!
- Bugscope TeamCheryl and Maria!
- Bugscope TeamWelcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Teamyay
- Bugscope TeamDo you recognize this critter?
- TeacherNo, what is it?-Maria
- Bugscope Teamyou can see one of its compound eyes, two antennae, the flat top of its head.
- Bugscope TeamMayfly larva
- TeacherOh. We were just looking at those.
- Bugscope TeamC&M you have the ability to drive, presently.
- Bugscope Teamhello Welan and Diddow!
- Bugscope Teamplease let me know when you have questions
- Bugscope Teama small field of bacteria here
- Bugscope Teammost of the bacteria likely live in biofilms, which are dried out here
- TeacherSo, is the bacteria usual on aquatic bugs?
Bugscope Teamthey are fairly common; also diatoms and other water flora/fauna
- 3:03 pm
- Teachercool. What's a diatom?
- Bugscope Teamthey're what diatomaceous earth are made of
- Bugscope Teamwhen we see them in the 'scope they're just the silica shells
- Teacherk
- Bugscope Teamdiatoms are actually algae, and many are single-celled
- Bugscope Teamthis is a whole microenvironment on the head of the mayfly larva
- Teacherwhat's that little wormy thing? is it an itty bitty parasite? if so, what kind?
Bugscope Teammost of those long things are setae, like hairs, that help the mayfly larva sense its enivronment
- GuestIs the white worm like thing coming out of the raised area actually a worm?
Bugscope Teamit's a seta
- GuestBut that white flat tape-worm like thing?
- Bugscope Teaminsects do not have skin with nerve endings in it. instead they have shells made of chitin, which is like what our fingernails are made of
- 3:09 pm
- Teachernot the long things, the little white thing here
Bugscope TeamI think it is also a seta, of a different shape. but there are also tiny wormlike things -- fusarum bacteria -- here, certainly
- Bugscope Teamanyway, insects sense their environment using the setae that stick through the cuticle and attach to nerves beneath
- Bugscope Teamsetae can sense smell, hot/cold, touch, wind/water currents
- Guestwhat is the white thing
Bugscope TeamI think it is a blade-like seta
- Teacherok, so is that kinda instead of eyes, or instead of fingers?
Bugscope Teamthis dude has eyes and claws as well
Bugscope Teamit's instead of having skin with nerve endings in it. and also instead of having ears and a tongue and a nose
- Teacherso a sixth sense of sorts?
Bugscope Teamit takes the place of senses we have as well; the insect chemical sense is extremely well developed compared to ours; they're like spectrographs
- Teacherdiddow is wondering if we could switch control to her
Bugscope Teamgot it!
- Bugscope Teamants, for example, do most of their communication via chemical scents
- Bugscope Teamsee the compound eye to the right?
- Bugscope Teamhaha this is awesome
- 3:14 pm
- Teacherya
- Bugscope Teamyou sent the coolest samples!
- Bugscope TeamCate set the stub up yesterday for us.
- Teacherthanks, that was my mom
Bugscope Teamwhat a cool mom!
- Teacherya
- Bugscope Teamcaddisfly larvae don't just live in any old stream
- Teacherno?
- Bugscope Teamthe water has to be pretty clean or they do not thrive
- Teacheroh, so a kinda indicator of pollution.
- Guestwhat are those hairllike things on the legs?
Bugscope Teammore setae (hairs), also sometimes called bristles, trichae, spines
- Bugscope Teamsome of those setae are also for proprioception
- Teacherwhat's that?
- Teacherproprioception, i mean
- Bugscope Teamwhich is self sensing -- so the insect can tell when its limb is bent or hyperextended, etc.
- GuestAre those three mouth parts?
Bugscope Teamyes in the center here
- Bugscope Teaminsects usually have two sets of palps that help them taste and manipulate prospective food into their mouths
- Bugscope Teamat the tips of some of the palps you find little tastebud-like things
- Teacherdo the 3 mouth parts have different jobs?
Bugscope Teamyes, but I don't know all of the functions, I'm sorry -- when they eat their mouths are moving in all directions
- 3:20 pm
- Teacherhow many palps are in a set?
Bugscope Teamusually a set of mandibular palps (2) and maxillary palps (2)
- Teachercool
- Bugscope Teamin humans the lower jaw is the mandible and the upper jaw is the maxilla
- Bugscope Teamwith insects the mouth usually opens sideways compared to ours
- Teacherok
- Bugscope Teamsilverfish have scales like mosquitoes, butterflies, moths, and very few other insects
- Guestare those scales?
Bugscope Teamyes they are!
- Bugscope Teamthese scales reflect silver light, as you know
- Bugscope Teamscales are also setae -- modified setae
- Bugscope Teamscales do lots of things, and one of the most important is that they come off easily -- so if you have scales and fly or wander into a spider web you might leave your scales and slip out
- Guestwhat are the hairy tipe things
Bugscope Teammore setae, yeah
- Teacherare the hairy things also setae?
Bugscope Teamyes they are!
- Bugscope Teaminsects are much more 'hairy' than you'd expect
- Teacheri didn't know mosquitos had scales.
Bugscope Teamthey even have them on their proboscis, but the part that sticks in you is inside, super sharp, and smooth
- Bugscope Teamthis is pretty much totally awesome
- Bugscope Teamit's a caddisfly with no cocoon around it
- 3:25 pm
- Teacheroh joy. i'm glad their needle thing is not hairy
Bugscope Teamhaha. it's called a fascicle, same root as fascist
- Guest is that a hat
Bugscope Teamwell we can check and see
- Bugscope Teamthe fascicle has four stylets in it -- the cutting parts. and a siphon tube that looks like an evil calla lily
- Teacherit would b a pretty ugly hat.
Bugscope Teamlots of micro sea creatures making up a most lovely hat
- Guestwhere is the eye? Is that it just left of the leg here?
Bugscope Teamyes it is the bump we see
- Bugscope Teamthe caddisfly larva eyes probably do not work super well, but all of those setae warn it when food is near
- Teacherwhy does it hav esuch a tiny i?
Bugscope TeamI am guessing, but I think it is more like a stemmata in a caterpillar, fairly primitive
- Teacherok
- Bugscope Teamthe eye probably registers light and dark, like the ocelli on the top of the head of many flying insects
- 3:30 pm
- Teacherok, so the setae are the feelers/seers?
Bugscope Teamyes they are -- they sense motion, vibration, hot vs cold, and also chemical scents
- Teacherdid the middle leg on the right lose a segment?
- Guestthe leg looks like a stick
Bugscope Teamyes and they seem mostly to have single claws, whereas adult insects often have double grasping claws
- Teacherwelan would like the controls now
- Teacheroh yeah, i see those.
- GuestWhat is the purpose of the protuberences that look like arm buds just below the lower legs? Do they hold it's body inside it's shell?
Bugscope Teamthat is a good guess. I am not sure, but some of those are likely not part of the insect -- they're water creatures like hydra, vorticella, etc.
- Teacheri dunno...
- Bugscope Teamsometimes we see lots of similar short bulbous features, and they are actually gills
- Bugscope Teameven though we critical point dried these larvae, the abdomen is soft and often shrivels a bit
- Teacherare the wrinkles 4 friction so the body doesn't come out of the shell?
Bugscope Teamwhen the insect is alive they are probably not so shrunken/shriveled like they are now
- Teacherok
- 3:35 pm
- Bugscope Teambut you can see lots of threadlike structures that probably, as Welan said, help secure the insect inside the cocoon.
- Guestthe wrinkles look like leavs!
Bugscope Teamyes they do!
- Guestis that the tail?
Bugscope Teamyes it is
- Bugscope Teamthis is how it holds onto the substrate so it doesn't get blown all around
- Teacheris the bottom of the caddisfly case open so the tail can latch onto rocks?
- Bugscope Teamlet's look at the one with the case and see
- Teachercause it looks like the thing on a caterpillar that does that.
- Bugscope Teamhere we see the caddisfly larvae in its stone cocoon
- Guestcan welan have the controls!!!
- Bugscope TeamWelan has control
- Teacherdiddow mean to say plkease
- Teacherthanx
- Guestthank you
- Bugscope Teamthis is a plant stem
- Guestthanks
- Teacherhuh. i guess it's a mystery.
- 3:40 pm
- Teacherwhy are we zoomed up on it?
Bugscope TeamI wanted to ensure that we could see what it was
- Bugscope Teamthis is the moth compound eye
- Teacherwhoa!
- Bugscope Teamwhen I made the preset it looked good, but by the time we drove over to look at it, it was charging up with electrons
- Bugscope Teammoths are very hard to coat adequately with gold-palladium to make them conductive
- Teacheris there any particular reason for the hexagonal shape? and how is it so perfect?
Bugscope Teamif you take round things and stack them, like oranges at a market, hexagonal is the best way to go. in nature you are stacking round eye facets into a dome shape, and hexagonal works best
- Guestcan moths see well?
Bugscope Teamyes they can. often they can see UV light, which we cannot
- Teacherokay, coolio.
- Bugscope Teamif you had compound eyes like this it would be hard to buy sunglasses
- Guestthis is realy cool
- Bugscope Teambut if you had compound eyes you would not have to turn your head as far to see all around you
- Teacheri meant moth, not fly. sorry
- 3:46 pm
- Teacherso if you ask a fly what color the sky is they'll say ultraviolet?
Bugscope Teamsome colors show up better than others for insects, but some flowers, for example, fluoresce in the UV, and that attracts the insects they need to move pollen around
- Teacherthe only thing that would make this cooler is if the images were in color. is there any reason it's not?
- Bugscope Teamin the center we see the proboscis, which rolls up into a coil when it is not being used
- Bugscope Teamwhen the moth wants to extend its proboscis into a flower, it pumps hemolymph into it the same way you would blow into a party favor to extend it at New Years
- Teacherdo we know how long the average proboscis is?
Bugscope TeamI don't know, but we can see that this one is likely at least 5 mm
- Teacherok
- Guestis that long toob thing the tong
Bugscope Teamthe one to the right is one of the palps, stripped of setae
- Bugscope Teamthe coiled thing is the tongue -- the proboscis
- Bugscope Teamit's like a straw
- Bugscope Teamthe white things that are charging up with electrons in the back are the antennae
- Bugscope Teamthe white thing that is flaring up to the right of the compound eye is a palp
- 3:51 pm
- Bugscope Teamthis is one of the vorticella like creatures, like a sea squirt
- Guestthat looks like a bat!!
- Teacherwhy are they twisted looking like a screw? thew antennae?
Bugscope TeamI think that may have been a male. They have more ornate antennae, and they are better able to sense pheromones in the air from female moths
- Teacherparasite or benefactor of a symbiotic relationship?
Bugscope TeamI think likely symbiotic
- Bugscope Teamthe tiny rock like things at the base, to the right, are diatoms
- Guestwhat is that?
- Teachercool. how do they each benefit?
Bugscope Teamthe sea squirt can live on the larva, or on its cocoon, but I am not sure how that would benefit the caddisfly larva
- Guestis that an animal
Bugscope TeamI think this is kind of like a sponge
- Bugscope Teama coelenterate
- Teacherwazzat?
- Bugscope Teamoops coelenterates are no longer valid
- 3:57 pm
- Teacherhah
Bugscope Teamoh man
- Guestthat looks like a chickin!!
- Bugscope Teamhaha yeah
- Guestit looks like a seed pod
Bugscope Teamsome of these features are so specialized, and we often see things we do not recognize
- Guestare thoes bones?
Bugscope Teaminsects have exoskeletons, but they really do not have bones, of course
- 4:02 pm
- Teacherwhy are there ripple looking things?
Bugscope Teamprobably the eyes are a bit dessicated since the moth died. we see nano-sized features on these ommatidia.
- Teachercoolio
- Guestthat is cool!!!
- Guestthis is so cool!!!!!!!
- Bugscope Teamthose are hard to get good images of at this working distance, but they are about 100 nm in diameter
- TeacherTHIS IS THE COOLEST!!!!!!!!!!!
- Teacheri beat you guys. ha.
- Guestthis is super!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Bugscope Teamthat is, they are smaller than the wavelengths of visible or even UV light
- Guestthis is
- Bugscope Teamyou can see where we made a TV shaped mark on the eye
- Guestsorry!
- Bugscope TeamI always think of these as comparable to rods/cones in a human eye
- Bugscope Teamfor collecting light
- Guestcoolllll
- 4:07 pm
- Bugscope Teamon the eye? or where we are now?
- Teacherthanks so much for answering our questions!
- Teacherbye scott
- Guestthank you so much!!!!!!!!
- Guestthat looks coooooooool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Guestwhat are those things that look like spotts??????????????????????
Bugscope TeamI am not sure, really, but the spots on the eye likely form a kind of light guide
- Bugscope Teamthis is a diatom
- Bugscope Teamif you Google them up you can see that they come in lots of shapes
- Bugscope Teamit's a silica-shelled unicellular alga
- TeacherThank you so much Scott for this wonderful experience. We are done for today. Everyone was fascinated by the images and learned so much.
- GuestThank you so much for offering this wonderful program. As the mom looking over my daughter's shoulder, this has been just captivating to observe.
Bugscope Teamthis is really fun for us
- Bugscope TeamThank you for connecting today and for sending such cool samples.
- Bugscope TeamSee you next time.
- Guestthank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Bugscope Teamhttp://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2012-005
- Bugscope Teamthat is your member page...
- TeacherBye Scott! We love BugScope!
Bugscope TeamBye!
- Bugscope TeamTha nk You.
- 4:12 pm
- Bugscope TeamOver and out!
