Connected on 2014-01-28 10:00:00
from Victoria, Texas, United States
- 8:46 am
- Bugscope Teamgetting ready for setup
- 8:51 am
- Bugscope Teamsample is in the 'scope and pumping down
- 8:59 am
- Bugscope Teamas soon as the vacuum is ready, we'll do some alignments and start looking around on the sample
- Bugscope Teamwe'll be saving the coolest things we can find as presets
- 9:06 am
- Bugscope Teamvacuum is almost ready
- Bugscope Teamhi!
- 9:11 am
- Bugscope Teamwelcome to bugscope. we are setting up presets now
- 9:17 am
- 9:24 am
- 9:29 am
- 9:35 am
- 9:40 am
- 9:47 am
- 9:52 am
- Bugscope Teamwe are ready to roll!
- Bugscope Teamplease feel free to drive now, to test things out if you would like
- Bugscope Teamyou have the option of selecting from any of the presets, on the lefthand screen, and you can also change the mag, focus, contrast and brightness...
- Bugscope Teamright now region 3 has control of the microscope
- Bugscope Teamplease let us know if you have any questions or any problems
- Teacherthank you, can we ask questions
Bugscope Teamabsolutely!
- Bugscope Teamthis is a fruitfly tarsus -- the distal end of one of the legs
- 9:58 am
- Bugscope Teamwe can see the claw, and we can also see the tiny hairs, called tenent setae, that help the fruitfly climb on walls
- Bugscope Teamregion 3 can drive, change the mag, etc., so you could take the mag lower, for example, to see where you are
- Bugscope Teamsweet!
- Bugscope Teamthis is a fly, and you can see that one of its compound eyes is caved in, a bit
- Bugscope Teambecause I'm sitting at the controls of the scanning electron microscope (SEM), I can drive as well, so I can fix things more quickly -- like fine focus
- Teacherthank you
- Bugscope Teamthis is the fly's tongue -- the sponging mouthparts of a housefly
- Bugscope Teamnormally this will be wet, to some extent
- Teacheris any of this debris or is it all part of tha anatomy
Bugscope Teamyes some of what we see is debris, like the fungal hyphae that look like web, to the right of center
- 10:03 am
- Teachercould you zoom out and then in so they could see the entire thing first
Bugscope Teamwe can zoom out only to about 40 times magnification, so this is as low as we can go
- Bugscope Teamthe bubbly background are features on the carbon tape we mount the insects on
- Bugscope Teamthe lighter areas to the south is where i used silver paint to help glue down the insects and also to ground the specimens
- Bugscope Teamwhen you have students with you, they can log on as students, like from a computer lab, and they can ask questions directly; we can also give them control of the 'scope, one at a time, with your permission
- Teacherdo yo have any insect eggs that we could see?
Bugscope Teamno sorry. we don't see them very often
- Bugscope Teamthis is the same structure we saw on the fruitfly, but more complex
- Teacherok thank you
- Bugscope Teamthe furry pads are called pulvilli; each one is called a pulvillus, and it helps the fly climb on glass and on the ceiling
- Teacherdo you have any amoebas or paramecium
Bugscope Teamthey wouldn't look very good unless we took some time fixing and preparing them for the scanning electron microscope
- Bugscope Teamthey are soft
- Bugscope Teaminsects have exoskeletons, so they retain most of their shape when they dry out, making it easier to prepare them for the microscope
- Bugscope Teamwe use insects and comparable arthropods because they require little prep, and it is easy to conceptualize what you are seeing
- Bugscope Teamwe can arrange to image things like amoeba and paramecium if someone wants to send them and gives us advance notice
- 10:08 am
- Bugscope Teamthis is a fly compound eye -- you can see the ommatidia -- with a moth scale to the lower right
- Teachercould you describe what we are looking at?
Bugscope Teamthe rectangles are the individual facets, or ommatidia, of the compound eye. the other thing to the lower right is a scale
- Bugscope Teamthis is so cool
- Bugscope Teama cute little ladybug, not so cute as a larva
- Bugscope Teamthese are super small
- Teacherdo you have any mealworms
Bugscope Teamwe do when people send them, and also darkling beetles; we don't have any on the stub today
- Bugscope Teamwe prepare a new stub of specimens for each session, and you're operating a $600,000 microscope to image them
- Teachertell us about the butterfly wing
Bugscope Teamthe ridges on the scales we see now interfere with light, so they produce colors the same way you see colors when you look at the grooves of a record
- Bugscope Teamthe scales provide color for butterflies, moths, and silverfish. they are also a defensive mechanism. if they are trapped in a spider web, they can try to shed a few scales to get free
- 10:13 am
- Teacherif we send in insects do we send them alive or dead?
Bugscope Teamwe would prefer if they were send dead.
- GuestThat is so cool!
- Bugscope Teamthose colors are called structural colors, and they can even be in the UV wavelengths, which some insects can see, and which we cannot see
- Bugscope Teamthey can be killed more 'humanely' by putting them in the freezer at least over night
- Bugscope Teamwing scales also have pigment colors
- Bugscope Teamwing scales function much like feathers do for a bird, but one of their primary purposes, as well, is to protect the insect from spider webs
- GuestWhy is the wings rippled?
Bugscope Teamthe ripples make the scales a bit more rigid, like Ruffles potato chips
- TeacherThank you so much, we will be exiting the session now.
Bugscope TeamThank You!
- Bugscope TeamHarbaugh's if you are not associated with today's school, we will be happy to work with you a bit longer. We had scheduled this session for an hour.
- GuestIf you have more to show and more time, we will gladly watch.
- Bugscope TeamHarbaugh's we gave you control, if you would like to drive.
- Bugscope Teamthis is a 'baby' ladybug
- 10:18 am
- GuestWhat is the powder/dirt looking stuff on the bug?
Bugscope Teamthere is a lot of juju on the ladybug larva, and there may, on this one, be a biofilm
- Bugscope Teambiofilms are laid down by bacteria, and they're like a gel that protects bacteria from being, for example, washed off
- Bugscope Teamladybug larvae are predators, and we were just saying that they are like fearsome warriors with the skulls of their prey hanging from their belts -- you can see the aphids they have eaten stuck to their bodies
- Bugscope Teamthis is a dragonfly
- Bugscope Teamthey are highly evolved predators, themselves
- 10:23 am
- Bugscope Teamthey have an almost 360 degree field of view
- Bugscope Teamthis is the head of one of the ladybug larvae, and to the right and lower we can see the biofilm
- Bugscope Teamthese have simple eyes so they don't see as well
- Bugscope Teamtiny antennae
- Bugscope Teamthe stemmata -- the simple eyes -- are little mounds that often collapse/deform
- Bugscope Teamso to the middle of the image now, and on the bottom, is stemmata
- Bugscope Teama stemmata, or whatever singular is for stemmata...
- Bugscope Teamant head
- Bugscope Teamwe can see the compound eye now, and you could actually count the ommatidia
- Bugscope Teamwhereas the dragonfly may have 30,000 ommatidia per compound eye
- Bugscope Teamthe right antenna is broken off
- GuestThat's a lot!
- 10:29 am
- Bugscope Teamand near the base of the right mandible we can see some scales from a moth or butterfly, perhaps
- Bugscope Teamalmost all ants we ever see are female
- Guestwhy is that?
Bugscope Teamit's more efficient, I guess; good question. insects and some other animals sometimes have the ability to be parthenogic, so they don't need males
- Bugscope Teammales are only needed for one thing- for reproduction
- Bugscope Teamwhen we see male ants, they have wings; that is because they would be flying out to mate with a queen ant, and the queen flies out so that she can get a different complement of genetic material
- Bugscope Teamthe queen ant can fly, has wings, at an early stage
- Bugscope Teamwhen she comes back, and has mated, some of the worker ants will clip her wings
- 10:34 am
- GuestThis all has been very interesting! Thank you so much for your time. We all learned something new today.We are going to sign off now. Have a great day!
Bugscope TeamThank You! See you later!
- Bugscope Teamthank you for hanging around!
- Bugscope Teamgone
