Jose Marti MAST Academy
Session 2012-106

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Transcript

Connected on 2013-03-14 08:30:00 from Miami-Dade, Florida, United States

• 7:29 am
• Bugscope Teamsample is in chamber, pumping down
• 7:36 am
• Bugscope Teamalmost ready to start making presets

• 7:43 am

• 7:49 am

• Bugscope Teamgood morning, Jose!
• Bugscope Teamwe're working on the presets
• 7:54 am

• 8:00 am

• Bugscope Teamback in a minute
• Teachergood morning, cold here...50s!
• 8:08 am
• Bugscope Team25 here
• Bugscope Teamcouple more places to go on the stub and I'm done

• 8:15 am

• 8:21 am

• Bugscope TeamJose we are ready any time now
• Bugscope Teamwe can look for a few more presets but as soon as you're ready we're ready

• 8:29 am
• Teacher2 more minutes
• Bugscope Teamyou can see that the proboscis points straight down, and here you can see three stylets coming out of it
• Bugscope Teampretty cool

• Teacherwhat insect are we on?
• Bugscope Teamthis is an aphid

• Bugscope Teamsuper small and softbodied

• Bugscope Teamthese must have been critical point dried or they would not look nearly this good
• Bugscope Teamyou can see that they are all high-performance, with dual exhausts

• Teacherour internet is slow today, they just appeared
• 8:34 am
• Bugscope Teamthe cornicles, or siphuncles, produce this stuff like hot-melt glue that can flow over an ant and immobilize it

• Bugscope Teamsome ants farm aphids and most ants attack them
• Bugscope Teamladybugs like to eat them

• Bugscope Teammaybe it would help the speed if you clicked on "switch to video" near the top of the window
• Bugscope TeamI believe that the aphids that are farmed produce nectar from the cornicles that feeds the ants

• Bugscope TeamJose you can click on any of the presets, to the left, as well
• Bugscope Teamthe field of view is a tiny bit more than a millimeter long
• Teachera student wanted to see if they head the pores like the beetle in the stem video
• Bugscope Teamyou mean spiracles?
• TeacherI don't see a video button
• Bugscope Teamthey are usually found along the sides
• Bugscope Teamup top next to Log Out on the right
• Teacheryes, they were on the wood-boring beetle

• Bugscope Teamtoday the best place to find spiracles is on the grasshopper
• 8:39 am
• Bugscope Teamhere it happens we are looking at the dorsal side of the aphid, and spiracles are usually found at the edges of the ventral side
• Teacherwhat is there "skin" carapace made out of?

• Teacherbtw this is a 6th grade class
• Bugscope Teama protein like what your fingernails are made of

• Bugscope Teama shrimp shell is the same thing
• Teacherwhat are these pore-like holes?

• Bugscope Teamthose may not be part of the aphid

• Bugscope Teamnot sure
• Bugscope Teamactually, I take that back

• Bugscope Teamnow that we are close it certainly looks quite like a spiracle

• Bugscope Teaminsects breathe through the spiracles, of which there are two on each side of each body segment

• Bugscope Teamthe spiracles can be opened or closed by the insects, and they lead, inside, to tracheae, which are ducts that channel air inside the body
• 8:44 am

• Bugscope Teamthey are kind of like the pores that plants use to breath
• Bugscope Teamthe tracheae look like round cardboard tubes, with regular ridges

• Bugscope Teamyou can tell what this is

• Bugscope Teamjust above its mouthparts you can see a tiny fly clinging to a leg
• Bugscope Teaminsect mouthparts are complex, compared to ours
• Bugscope Teamthe mandibles open side to side, like a gate, and the maxillae open up and down
• Bugscope Teamif the insect has that kind of mouth

• Bugscope Teamfor example if you look at the housefly, it has sponging mouthparts, which are quite different
• Bugscope Teamthe tiny fly looks like it is pole vaulting

• Bugscope Teamthe four 'feelers' around the mouth are called palps
• Bugscope Teamthe palps help the insect to taste and move around food
• Bugscope Teamto the top right we can see the open end of one of them
• Teacherstudent wants to know if it is without shell; or is that color from the treatment
• 8:49 am

• Bugscope Teamit has a shell still
• Bugscope Teamit's black and white because we are imaging with electrons instead of light.

• Bugscope Teamthe grasshopper has an exoskeleton -- so it has a kind of shell, like a suit of armor

• Bugscope Teamto make the insects conductive for the electrons we coat the insects with the thin layer of metal
• Bugscope Teamif we saw today's samples out of the microscope and on a tabletop, for example, they would all look silvery

• Bugscope Teambecause as Cate says they are coated with a thin layer of metal that looks silver
• Bugscope Teamnow we are looking at the open end of the palp, and we see tiny pointy hairs or bristles that are like tastebuds, on your tongue
• Teacherare the little hair-like things within for taste or feel?
• Teacherare the outer hairs for touch?
• Bugscope Teambecause insects have an exoskeleton -- the shell -- they need to have those hair-like things, called setae ('see-tee') to help them feel and taste and also sense hot and cold
• Bugscope Teamyes the outer hairs are all likely for touch
• Bugscope Teamthe ones inside are for taste/smell and the ones outside are more for sense of touch

• 8:54 am
• Bugscope Teamsome of the hairs are for what is called 'proprioception,' which is self-sensing, so the insect knows when it is touching something or when one of its limbs might be overextended
• Bugscope Teamthis is cool
• Teacherabout how many eyes does it have?
• Bugscope Teamthe things that look like donuts are called 'pedicels'
• Bugscope TeamI think they have two or three hundred, not sure

• Bugscope Teamthe tiny round things -- the spheres -- are called ommatidia, and they are individual lenses of the compound eyes
• Teacherwhat are pedicels for?
• Bugscope Teamwhen the mosquito was alive they were not shriveled up like they are now
• Teacherwhat are the whiskers lower left of eyes?

• Bugscope Teami think those are on a palp

• Bugscope Teamthe pedicels are the bases of the antennae; in some insects they have sensors on the inside that help them sense forces that move the antennae

• Bugscope Teamyou can see the furry thing coming toward us -- that is one of the antennae

• Bugscope Teamthis is a female mosquito, and we can tell because it has plain antennae
• Bugscope Teamthis is cool

• 9:00 am
• Teacherwould the eyes not be shriveled peas when it was alive?
• Bugscope Teamexactly jose

• Teacheris that a parasite on the eye?
• Bugscope Teamthat is a scale
• Teacherdid it grow on the eye or flake off from another part of the body?
• Bugscope Teammosquitoes, moths, butterflies, and silverfish are covered with scales like that
• Bugscope Teamit fell off from some other area
• Bugscope Teamit flaked off -- they come off easily
• Teacherteacher was right for once
• Bugscope Teamthey provide protection to those insects that have them. if the insect flies or runs into a spider web, the scales can stick to the web and the insect can leave them and get away
• Teacherstudent asks why does base of pedicel now look more like a lens for an eye?
• Bugscope Teamyay for the teacher!
• Bugscope Teamthe pedicel is in the place we would expect to see an eye, so it confuses us

• Bugscope Teamthe same thing happens with ants -- the antenna occupy the position where we would expect to find the eyes

• 9:05 am
• Bugscope Teamit shows how important the antennae are to ants
• Teachermmm Ruffles; beautiful detail on the scale

• Bugscope Teamsweet

• Bugscope Teamscales that do not have holes in the ridges are considere to be more primitive than those with holes

• Teacheris this household mold?
• Bugscope Teamthere is a preset on the stub that has butterfly scales on it with holes in them

• Bugscope Teamlots of mold

• Bugscope Teamwe are not sure but it is super cool to have found those ones with little suckers on them like octopus suckers
• Teacheris each globule a separate spore?

• Bugscope Teamwe are at such a high mag for these fragile objects that they are being distorted by the electron beam
• Bugscope Teamthose round parts are where the other spores were once attached, most likely

• Bugscope Teamyes each globule is a single spore
• Bugscope Teamawesome
• 9:10 am
• Teacherso are you all

• Bugscope Teamthis is super cool too

• Bugscope Teamyou can see that the scales have an open lattice; they are much like feathers are to a bird
• Bugscope Teammosquito scales and silverfish scales are not like these

• Bugscope Teamso pretty

• Bugscope Teamthe distance between the ridges is a bit smaller than the length of a rod-shaped bacterium

• Teacheris it salt?
• Bugscope Teamthere's a piece of salt hanging over the edge of the world

• 9:15 am
• Bugscope Teamyes it is a kind of salt we cannot get anymore, that we know of

• Bugscope Teamit has that super cool incised pattern in it like it was sculpted
• Teacherwhat type of salt is it?
• Bugscope Teamwe think that the company that made it must have added an anti-caking agent that interrupted the way the sodium chloride crystals form
• Teacheris this a more or less perfect crystal than regular salt?
• Bugscope Teamit used to come from Wendy's restaurants in those little paper packets

• Bugscope Teamthere is also some regular salt on the stub, and it has smooth edges
• Teacherwhich part is the brochosome? purpose?
• Bugscope Teamthe spheres with holes in them are the brochosomes

• Bugscope Team250 to 400 nanometers in diameter
• Bugscope Teamsuper small
• Bugscope Teamnear the length of visible light
• 9:21 am
• Bugscope Teamthis helps to show why we cannot see color using an electron microscope

• Bugscope Teamthis is the tip of the proboscis of the female mosquito
• Bugscope Teamyou can see some of those same tiy scales to the far right just now

• Bugscope Teamthis is a sheath, and inside it is the fascicle that sticks into your skin when the mosquito bites you
• Teacherabout how long is the fascicle?

• Bugscope Teamit is about as long as the proboscis, so maybe 3 or 4 millimeters, maybe longer on industrial-sized mosquitoes

• Bugscope Teamthe fascicle needs to be able to penetrate your skin and reach the blood
• Bugscope Teamthis is the head of a moth, kind of dirty
• Bugscope Teamits proboscis is coiled up when it is not being used
• 9:26 am

• Bugscope Teama moth's proboscis can be very long, more than an inch sometimes, so it can reach deep into a flower
• Bugscope Teamit is kind of like a straw
• Teacherwhat are the corn flakes above?

• Bugscope Teamwhen the moth wants to extend it, it pushes hemolymph, which is insect 'blood,' into it, blowing it out like a party favor
• Bugscope Teamthose are scales

• Bugscope Teamfemale pattern baldness

• Teacherwhat material is the eye made of?

• Bugscope Teamit is also made of chitin -- the same protein

• Bugscope Teamsame as the rest of its exoskeleton

• Bugscope Teamhello
• Bugscope Teamsome insects have piercing/sucking mouthparts, like aphids and like this true bug
• Teachercan you read me? is there a genus for bugs? family?
• Bugscope Teambedbugs are like this

• Bugscope Teamhemiptera
• 9:31 am

• Bugscope Teamptera means wing, like pterodactyl
• Bugscope Teamcicadas, leafhoppers, stinkbugs, aphids

• Teachermore primitive Ruffles again
• Bugscope Teamhemi means half; hemipterans have wings that are half hardenedf

• Bugscope Teamyes those scales were from another insect
• Teacherwhat is the function of this?

• Bugscope Teamthis is one of the dual exhausts -- the cornicles or siphuncles found on aphids
• Bugscope Teammost of them produce a kind of glue that hardens when it gets into the air
• Teacherthanks a million! class change time
• Bugscope Teaman ant poking at the aphid from behind can be enveloped in the glue and immobilized
• Bugscope Teamare we done for today?
• 9:38 am
• Teacherunforetunately yes, this seemed easier than 2 years ago; STEM careers were good!
• Bugscope TeamI hope everyone had fun this morning
• Bugscope Teamhttps://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2012-106 is where you can access chat and images
• Teacheryou guys are great keep up the missionary work!

• Bugscope Teamha thanks!