Deerfield School
Session 2015-029

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Miscellaneous

Transcript

Connected on 2015-06-16 11:30:00 from Essex County, New Jersey, United States

• 11:10 am
• Bugscope Teamwe are ready to roll
• 11:32 am
• Bugscope TeamHello!
• Bugscope TeamWelcome to Bugscope!
• Bugscope Teamthis is a female mosquito\
• Bugscope Teamhello!
• Bugscope TeamMrs Lissy we used what we had, and I am sorry we are out of butterflies but have a lot of cool critters to look at today.
• Teacherthat's ok! We are excited to see what you have!
• Bugscope Teamplease let us know when you have any questions
• Bugscope Teamsweet!
• Bugscope Teamyou should have control of the microscope, using the tools at the top of the screen

• Bugscope Teamalso, you may click on any of the presets on the lefthand screen

• Teachercan we zoom into the eyes
• Bugscope Teamwe know this is a female (the mosquitoes that bite) because she has basic, simple antennae

• Bugscope Teamthe little round things we see now are the ommatidia -- the individual eye facets

• Bugscope Teamhexagons are a shape that fit well with the curvature of something
• 11:37 am
• Bugscope Teamwe see ommatidia now, and to the lower right we see a scale that has fallen off of the wing or the body

• Teacherhow do the eyes work?

• Teacherwhy do the eyes have a texture?
• Bugscope Teameach eye collects an image, kind of the way a camera lens would do, and the brain forms all of those individual images into something that makes sense to the insect
• Bugscope Teamsome of the stuff is something that got onto the eye, most likely after it died
• Bugscope Teamwe think that the individual super tiny features (the texture) help focus the light that comes into the eyes in a way that is comparable to how human eyes work, with rods and cones

• Bugscope Teambut if you zoomed in, you would see there are little pillars on the eye, that are similar to the rods and cones in our eyes

• Bugscope Teamthe little pillars we see are very small, actually in the nanometer scale

• Teacherhow do you collect the bugs that we are seeing?
• Bugscope Teamthey are probably 100 nanometers in diameter

• 11:42 am
• Teacherwhat insect is this?
• Bugscope Teamwe catch them in the yard or sometimes in our houses, and we freeze them
• Bugscope Teamthis is an ant!
• Bugscope Teamthis is an ant
• Bugscope Teamfreezing them is the 'humane' way to kill them. it puts them to sleep first
• Bugscope Teambut people also give us insects and comparable arthropods that are not insects
• Bugscope Teamlike rolypolies and millipedes, not insects
• TeacherCan you zoom in on the mouth and tell us a little about how an ant's mouth works?

• Bugscope Teamthe jaws open out like a gate, instead of moving up and own like ours
• Bugscope Teamthe tiny setae (the things that look like hairs) are sensory, and they help the ant feel when something is touching it, or they feel the wind
• Bugscope Teamsome setae also help the ant sense hot and cold, and some setae help it taste or smell

• Bugscope Teampart of the mouth is a little more messy-looking
• Teacherwhy?
• Bugscope Teamthere are four things that look like tiny legs, or feelers, that come out of the mouth
• Bugscope Teamin this case they look kind of messy, maybe because there is some food stuck there

• Teacherwhy do some ants bite people and others don't
• 11:48 am
• Bugscope TeamI think this debris is from another insect, and the ant has been eating it or just cleaning it up

• Bugscope Teamit is a female
• Bugscope Teamalmost all ants we see are females
• Teacherhow do you know

• Bugscope Teamthere are different ways of thinking about it, but the males are not as useful
• Bugscope Teammost ants and bees are females. they are the ones you see doing the work for the colony or hive
• Bugscope Teamall males do is mate
• Bugscope Teammales have wings

• Bugscope Teamthis is the compound eye, a little different from that of the mosquito

• Teacherhow are they different?

• 11:53 am
• Bugscope Teamthe mosquitoes have very round ommatidia that are ball-shaped, almost spherical; with the ant and many other insects the ommatidia (what we call the eye facets, or individual lenses) are flatter, like the ones we see now
• Bugscope Teamthe ant probably cannot see as well as the mosquito

• Bugscope Teamthis, now, is called a 'true bug'
• Bugscope Teamthere are many true bugs, including bedbugs and cicadas
• Bugscope Teamalso, stinkbugs and aphids
• Bugscope Teamtrue bugs have piercing/sucking mouthparts like this
• Teacherhow are they different from mosquitos?

• Teacherwould a butterfly's mouth work the same way?
• Bugscope Teamfemale mosquitos will bite for a blood meal before they mate. true bugs may drink liquids like bug or human blood or plant sap to food
• Bugscope Teamtrue bugs also have sort of half-wings, whereas mosquitoes, which are a kind of fly, do not
• Bugscope Teama butterfly's mouth works in a similar fashion, with a long proboscis, although with butterflies and moths the proboscis is often coiled when it is not being used

• Bugscope Teambutterfly and moth mouths will be rolled up when not in use for easy storage. They fill the mouth with their blood to unroll it and the liquids go up the tube
• 11:59 am
• Bugscope Teamwe see that the compound eyes of this bug are bulbous and go around the head, making it so that the bug can see around it much better than we can, for example, without moving its head
• Bugscope Teammost insects cannot turn their heads very well, if at all
• Bugscope TeamCate found some pollen grains on the true bug's thorax

• Teacherwhat do bugs do with pollen?
• Bugscope Teamso cool looking
• Bugscope Teamsome bugs collect pollen on purpose, like bees, and some collect pollen sort of by accident
• Bugscope Teamsome will carry them to other places without noticing. honeybees will store some pollen in their pollen stomach to be made into honey later
• Bugscope Teamwhen they carry pollen to other places, they have the effect of cross-pollinating, or just plain pollinating, flowers
• Teacherhow do their antennae work?
• Bugscope Teamthat is how flowers turn into apples, for example -- when they are pollinated

• Bugscope Teaminsects use various chemicals/traces of chemicals, to send signals to each other
• Bugscope Teamand the antennae help pick up those signals
• 12:04 pm
• Bugscope Teamkind of like perfume, with people

• Bugscope Teamthis is the true bug's antenna, up close
• Bugscope Teamthere are many different types of setae that help taste and smell and sense hot/cold and also sense wind and touch
• Teachercan you show up a bug's legs and tell us how they work? Do they have feet?

• Teachercan we see the moth's wings?

• Bugscope Teamthey have claws at the end of each of their legs. they work like hands or feet
• Bugscope Teamthey can grab things with them

• Bugscope Teamthe claws are the hooked things that look kind of like bull's horns
• 12:09 pm
• Bugscope Teamsome insects do not walk on the tips of the legs, but on features that are near the tips

• Teachercan we see the moth's wings?

• Bugscope Teami removed them because they were too large

• Teacherwhat are we looking at now?
• Bugscope Teamthis is a close-up view of a single scale that is on the moth's leg; it is what we find on the wings
• Bugscope Teamscales are kind of like feathers

• Bugscope Teamthis may not belong to the moth, however

• Teacherwe are out of time. thank you so much for sharing this with us!
• Bugscope Teamthe wings and the body are covered with scales like these
• Bugscope TeamThank You, Everyone!
• Bugscope Teami hope you liked the insects we had today
• Teacherbye from Deerfield School
• Teacherthank you!
• 12:14 pm