Connected on 2014-06-23 10:15:00
from Worcester, Massachusetts, United States
- 9:05 am
- Bugscope Teamsample is pumping down for this morning's session with Millbury Street Elementary School.
- 9:14 am
- 9:20 am
- 9:25 am
- Bugscope Teamgood morning!
- Bugscope Teammaking presets now
- Bugscope TeamI guess you can tell...
- Bugscope Team2F I wil
- Bugscope TeamI will be away for a few minutes, then back to finish presets. You have control now.
- 9:38 am
- Bugscope TeamI'm back!
- 9:44 am
- Bugscope Teamthis is a cool sample of critters today
- Bugscope Teamwe are done setting up but may add a few more...
- 9:50 am
- Bugscope Teamconehead!
- 9:55 am
- Bugscope Teamnow we're back on the wasp, which has an eye in the middle of its forehead as well as two on the sides and two more at the top of its head.
- 10:00 am
- Bugscope Teamwasps are related to bees and ants, so they often look similar
- 10:07 am
- 10:14 am
- Bugscope Teamplease let us know when you have questions, and when you might need help driving
- Teacherok we're here and ready to go!
- Bugscope Teamyay!
- Bugscope Teamthis is a small wasp, and you can see its compound eyes on either side of its head
- Teacherwhy do wasps have big eyes
- Bugscope Teamplus the dot in the middle of its head, also an eye, called an 'ocellus.'
- Bugscope Teamthey need to be able to see well, and if they have big rounded eyes like that they can see around them without turning their heads
- Teacherwhat type of wasp is it
Bugscope Teamnot sure, I'm sorry
- Teacherwhy do wasps sting
Bugscope Teamthey do it to protect themselves or the nest or hive
- Teacherwhat do wasps eat
Bugscope Teamthey like sugary things, like the nectar from flowers
- Teacherwhat are the things coming out below the eyes
Bugscope Teamthose are the antennae -- the long rod-like things
- Bugscope Teamwe can see the mandibles, too -- the jaws
- Teacherdo wasps have a mouth
Bugscope Teamthis is the mouth, the outside of the mouth.
Bugscope Teamthe mandibles, or jaws, open side to side like a gate
- Teacherhow long do wasps survive
Bugscope TeamI think the average age is about 6 weeks
- 10:19 am
- Bugscope Teamsome wasps are parasitic, and they sting their prey to make it so it cannot move; then they lay eggs in their prey's body
- Teacherwhen a wasp stings someone do they always dies
Bugscope Teamwasps can sting repeatedly because unlike honeybees their stingers do not get caught in mammalian skin
- Bugscope Teamnow we see lots of mites living on the wasp
- Bugscope Teamall of the rounded things in the lower part of where we are looking now
- Bugscope Teamremember that if you wish you can select from any of the presets on the lefthand screen
- Bugscope Teamwasps and many other flying insects have simple eyes -- the small ocelli -- on the tops of their heads. The ocelli help keep them oriented with the sun, and where they are in a field, for example.
- Bugscope Teamthis is a tiny moth, from my house
- Bugscope Teamits eyes are red, but with the scanning electron microscope we cannot see color
- Bugscope Teamsee its very round eyes?
- Bugscope Teammoths and butterflies, as well as silverfish and mosquitoes, have lots of scales on their bodies. One important purpose of the scales is to help them get away if they get caught in spider webs.
- 10:24 am
- Teacherwhy is the moth so hairy
Bugscope Teamsome of the things that look like hairs are scales
- Teacherwhat is the heart shaped thing on its back
Bugscope Teamthat is where its forelegs are folded together
- Teacherwhat are the pointy things coming out of the eyes
Bugscope Teamthose are setae (hairs) that help the moth sense its environment; they may be mechanosensory, meaning they are touch sensitive like cat or rat whiskers
- Teacherwhy are there so many circles on its eyes
Bugscope Teamthose are the lenses; they provide tiny images; one very useful thing about that is they make the moth very sensitive to motion in its visual field
- Bugscope Teamthe circles are called ommatidia
- Teacherwhy can't female moths fly
Bugscope Teamthey can fly unless they've lost too many scales
- Bugscope Teamyou can tell males from females, often, because the males have very ornate antennae, whereas those of the females are plain
- Bugscope Teamthis is a stinkbug, which is one of the 'true bugs"
- 10:30 am
- Bugscope Teamtrue bugs feed by poking their probosces into plants or fruits
- Teacherdo stinkbugs really stink
Bugscope Teamyes they do! and they do not like their own smell either
- Teacherwhy is the stinkbug so spiky looking
Bugscope Teamspikiness probably protects it from being eaten easily before it can produce its bad scent
- Teacherhow do stinkbugs stink
Bugscope Teamthey have glands a bit further down, on the ventral side where the legs are
- Teacherhow do you know they don't like their smell
Bugscope Teamthey have little organelles that help suck up the odor so they don't have to smell it. it's interesting, because if they thought they smelled great they might not consider their smell a weapon, or a means of protection from predators
- Bugscope Teamthe gland openings are here, between the legs, but they are hard to see on this stinkbug because it has a film of dried fluid there
- Teacherare the balls on the side of it's head eyes or ears
Bugscope Teamthose are compound eyes, like the moth's compound eyes
- Bugscope Teamthis is the opening of one of the stink glands, but it is messy, covered with juju
- 10:36 am
- Teacherhow big are stinkbugs usually
Bugscope Teammaybe around as big as your thumb's nail or a little bigger
- Teacherwhat's juju
Bugscope Teamit's what we call the dried fluids and stuff we don't recognize
- Bugscope Teamthis is the tip of the proboscis, which it sticks into plants
- Teacherwhat do stinkbugs eat
Bugscope Teamthey suck sap and other fluids from plants, and they use their long proboscis to stick into the plants to do that
- Bugscope Teamthe bent things we see now are a couple of the stylets, or laciniae, they use to cut into plants
- Teacherwhat do stinkbugs do that's good for the earth
Bugscope Teamthey help things decompose, break down, and some other insects and birds eat them, so they provide food
- Teacherwhat are the curvy things
Bugscope Teamthose are the cutting mouthparts
- Bugscope Teamyou can see that this one has serrations on it that help it cut into plants
- Bugscope Teamthey are very much like stingers
- Bugscope Teamfleas have cutting mouthparts like this
- 10:41 am
- Bugscope Teamsometimes we think a certain insect or plant or animal is useless, and even dangerous, but we don't always realize that it serves a purpose
- Bugscope Teamthis is so awesome!
- Bugscope Teamthis is a very flat beetle's head, and in its jaws we see a mite!
- Teacherthis is really cool!
- Teacherwhat is the powdery looking stuff on it's back
Bugscope Teamit seems to be dried mud
- Teacherwhy does it's mouth look like a claw
Bugscope Teamthat's how it bites into things and begins the chewing process. it's also good for defending itself
- Bugscope Teamfurther down on the body are more mites
- Bugscope Teamif you eat crabs at all you can play with the mechanism that opens and closes the claw
- Teacherhow do the claws move
Bugscope Teamthere is a tendon that gets pulled back that closes the claw. they release the tendon to open it
Bugscope Teamthe tendon has a funny name; its called an 'unguitractor.'
- Teacherdo they only eat mites or do they eat other things
Bugscope Teamit is unclear whether the beetle was really eating the mite or the mite crawled into its mouth to steal some food
- 10:46 am
- Teachercan we see the other mites
Bugscope Teamhere we go
- Bugscope Teamthe mites are very similar to ticks
- Teacherwhere do these beetles live
Bugscope TeamI am sorry -- we got these very flat beetles from the entomologists, and we do not have any of them with us today to help answer that question
- Teacheris this the abdomen of the beetle
Bugscope Teamyes! this is the tip of the abdomen
- Bugscope Teamtoday we have another type of mite on the wasp we had seen earlier; we really got lucky today
- Bugscope Teamthe mites dont
- Teacherdo they jump or walk
Bugscope Teamthey walk; they have I think six little legs, but I don't think they are insects
- Bugscope Teamthe mites dont have those jumping legs that flees have, which are likespringy legs like grasshoppers and crickets.
- Teacherdoes the bite hurt really bad
Bugscope Teamthey are so small that we would not feel it if they were able to bite us; I'm not sure they bite anyway
- Teachershould we go back to the wasp to see the other mites
Bugscope Teamit would be cool to see how they are different
- 10:51 am
- Teacherwhat are the mites doing to the beetle
Bugscope Teamthey might live symbiotically with the beetle. maybe they help keep it clean.
- Teacherwhy does it look like it has a hole or opening at the tip of the abdomen
Bugscope Teamthe abdomen is indeed open there; we see that with bees and wasps sometimes; it may be that when the insect dies the body flexes and what would normally be closed is open
- Bugscope Teamthis is what the tip of the abdomen looks like on one of the wasps, plus we can see its stinger, which is broken
- Teacherwhy did the beetle look slimy
Bugscope Teamit may not be the beetle's fault. we got these specimens in liquid, and some of the liquid stuck to the specimens
- Teacherare we looking at the other mites on the wasp?
Bugscope Teamno, what we see here are bumps from dried liquid. kind of like water spots
- Bugscope Teamnow we are going to see the mites on the wasp
- Teachercool, we can see the mites
- Bugscope Teamthese are little bruisers
- Bugscope Teamthey have thick little arms and legs
- 10:56 am
- Bugscope Teamthey look like they are dancing
- Bugscope Teamwe can also see one of the wasp's claws, to the right
- Teacherhip hop??
Bugscope Teamhaha Yes I think so
- Teacherwasps have claws?
Bugscope Teamyes! we find that many insects have claws
- Teacherare the claws at the end of the legs
Bugscope Teamyes always
- Bugscope Teamthere are two claws here, kind of clasped together, and we see the rampant mite in the back, to the left
- Teacherwhy does it look like the wasp is rough
Bugscope Teamsometimes the roughness makes the exoskeleton tougher; it may also help keep bacteria from growing on it; it sometimes also produces a shiny color
- Teacherwhat are the spikes in front of the mite
Bugscope Teamthose are hairs on the wasp. they are for sense of touch most likely. most hairs you see on insects are for sense of touch
- Teacherwhat does rampant mean
Bugscope Teamit means up on its hind legs. it's a kind of a joke from heraldry, from those families in England, for example, with family crests with, for example, 'two lions rampant.'
- 11:02 am
- Bugscope Teamwe can see that this mite has lots of infoldings in its body; that allows it to feed a lot and to swell up, like a tick
- Teacheroh we thought it might be because it was going crazy on the wasp but we werent sure
Bugscope Teamit looks like it; we could have said it was running amok
- Teacherso its not just old and wrinkled
Bugscope Teamhaha!
Bugscope Teamit's young and wrinkled...
- Teacherthe mite's head looks like an anteater. is that what it is using to eat
Bugscope Teamthat's another claw, and/or palp. their mouths are very small
- Teacherwhere is the mite's head
Bugscope Teamoften the head is very small, or more likely the body is a cephalothorax, meaning the head and body are one piece, like a spider
- 11:07 am
- Bugscope Teamso we see this tiny part between the front legs, and we think it must be the head, but its head may be fused into its body
- Teacherwhy does it look like a hand
- Teacherhow do mites eat
Bugscope Teamsome of them seem to chew their food, but many of them we think must absorb the food as fluids, for example they may feed on hemolymph (insect blood) that squeezes through the insect's joints
- Teacherso are they arachnids
Bugscope TeamI think they are related but I am not sure; there is little information online, and the book about them is very expensive; I want to see it before spending the money on it
- Teacherwe'll try to find out and let you know
- Teacherwhat do mites eat
Bugscope Teamsome eat flakes of skin -- dustmites do that; and some seem to live on scraps and fluids like hemolymph
- Teacherlooks like a squid!
Bugscope Teamhaha Yeah!
- Bugscope Teamits eyes are streamlined into the sides of its head
- Teacherare those little knobby things eyes
Bugscope Teamno those are the antennae.
- 11:13 am
- Teacherwhy is the head so pointy
Bugscope Teamit looks like the head has ribs in it similar to the ribs on the head of a cicada, so I bet that part of that shape is due to muscles inside that help the leafhopper suck sap and other fluids into its proboscis and thus into its mouth
- Teacherso is this the bottom of it's body or the top
Bugscope Teamwe are looking at the ventral (underside) of the head-end. this is essentially the face of the leafhopper
- Teacheris the head like a leaf to help it camoflage
Bugscope Teamyes I think you are right about that
- Teacheris that the mouth at the bottom of the pointy part, between the two legs
Bugscope Teamit's between the two front legs near the bottom of the screen.
- Teacherwhere are the eyes
Bugscope Teamthey are on the sides, rounded and sticking out a little
- Bugscope Teamnow we can see the eyes, on either side, and one of the antennae, and most of the proboscis, which is blunt
- Teacherso the antennae are on the underside?
Bugscope Teamyes in this case they are
- Bugscope Teamsee the eye facets now, below the antenna?
- Teacheroh now we can see the antennae, thanks!
Bugscope Teamit's a thin one
- Bugscope Teamleafhoppers are a little different in that they produce tiny spheres from their bodies, called brochosomes, that they coat the outside of their bodies with
- Teacherwhat do they eat
Bugscope Teamthey suck the juices from leaves
- 11:19 am
- Teacherdo they hop
Bugscope Teamyes like little grasshoppers, kind of
- Bugscope Teamif you brush your hand over a bush with leafhoppers in it they will spring upwards
- Bugscope Teamnow we are looking at something on the nanoscale
- Bugscope Teamthe spheres we see that look like Trix, or Kix, are brochosomes
- Teacherthanks so much! this was really awesome! we are off to recess now
Bugscope TeamThank you!
- Bugscope TeamSee you next year!
- Teacherfor sure!
- Bugscope Teamhttp://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2014-020
- Bugscope Teamthis is your member page for today
- Bugscope Teamgood bye!
- Bugscope TeamThank you for working with us today!
