Connected on 2019-10-29 13:00:00
from Roswell, Georgia, United States
- 12:23 pm
- Bugscope TeamCate's choosing presets. Scott's recording them. Camille is the recording angel.
- 12:28 pm
- Bugscope TeamHello The Real Teppie!
- 12:35 pm
- GuestHi all! I can't use Teppie for some reason...:(
- 12:44 pm
- Bugscope Teamhi Donna!
- TeacherI am just checking in.
- Bugscope TeamWelcome back!
- 12:49 pm
- Bugscope Teamhi lily
- 12:54 pm
- Bugscope Teamthis is cool, where we are right now with the brochosomes caught in the butterfly wing scale
- Bugscope TeamWelcom, Lily. We even have some pollen named after you today :)
- 12:59 pm
- Bugscope TeamThis is the tip of one of the trapjaw ant's mandibles, where it is chipped
- TeacherScience teacher is introducing you now.
- Bugscope TeamHi guys! We're starting off looking at some bacteria stuck to the mandibles of an ant.
- 1:07 pm
- Bugscope TeamHere's the tip of the mandible. The end is chipped off, you can see.
- TeacherStudents are guessing what the mandible is....
Bugscope Teamit is basically the jaw of an insect
- TeacherWould you like to pass controls to Michael?
Bugscope TeamCate just did that. Go ahead, Michael.
- TeacherWaiting for butterfly wings
- TeacherThank you. We have some lag in the update..
Bugscope Teamyou aren't alone. no worries
- TeacherShould we click again?
- Bugscope TeamIt'll be there in a few seconds...
- 1:12 pm
- Bugscope TeamSorry, a glitch here. A few more seconds.
- Bugscope TeamSorry we are running into some serious lag...
- TeacherUnderstoond
- Bugscope Teamthere we go
- Teacherbeautifule
- Bugscope Teamso this is zoomed in on a single scale
- TeacherCan you tell us about this?
- Bugscope Teamand the little balls are called brochosomes. they are only made by another type of insect- leafhoppers
- Bugscope TeamThe little soccer balls are what they call brochosomes.
- Bugscope TeamThey got stuck in the holes, the pockets, of the butterfly's wing.
- Bugscope Teamleafhoppers could have been friendly with the mother or butterfly, or the brochosomes are light enough to travel through the air
- Bugscope TeamThe spacing of the holes and ribs makes the wing's color brighter.
- Bugscope TeamBrochosomes come from the Malpighian tubules of the leafhopper. They spread brochosomes all over their cuticle (their exoskeleton).
- Bugscope Teamthe wing is yellow in color, but we wouldn't see that color in this type of microscope
- Bugscope Team(because it images with electrons, not light)
- Bugscope TeamThis is a butterfly wing scale, though, so it must have rubbed against a leafhopper.
- Bugscope Teamridges in the scales are small enough to refract the light to make structural color
- Bugscope TeamBrochosomes are quite small, about 250 to 400 nanometers in diameter.
- 1:17 pm
- Bugscope TeamSo they're either at the edge of or smaller than the wavelengths of visible light
- Bugscope Teamlooks like there are some squished brochosomes here
- Bugscope TeamWhen leafhoppers spread the brochosomes onto their cuticle, it's called an 'anointing behavior.'
- Bugscope TeamBrochosomes are thought to be applied to leafhopper eggs to keep them from drying out, but as far as I know that is just a theory.
- Bugscope TeamThere's lots of crud on this honeybee claw!
- Bugscope Teamso this whole honeybee looks like someone dumped dirt on it
- Bugscope TeamFor once it's dirt and not pollen that's stuck to the bee. Maybe it got lost.
- Bugscope Teambetween the claws, where we are now, is a part of the claw called the pulvillus
- 1:23 pm
- Bugscope TeamThe pulvillus is covered with mostly dirt or dried good right now
- Bugscope TeamWhen we can see it clearly, as on a cleaner insect's claw, the pulvillus has little setae ('hairs') on it that are a bit sticky. They're called tenent setae, and they help the insect cling to objects, or -- regarding flies -- clinging to the ceiling
- TeacherHow many times can the microscope enhance the images?
Bugscope TeamAbout a zillion squillion times on a good day.
Bugscope TeamRight now, 32000x as you see in the numbers below the picture.
Bugscope TeamToday, we can get up to 100,000x and still hold good focus.
- Bugscope TeamFor publishable images, probably no more than 350,000x if we are lucky.
- 1:28 pm
- Bugscope TeamWe can go to a about a million times, although there is often little to see.
Bugscope TeamOn a bug, that is. Bugs look boring THAT close up. Other things look interesting to scientists working on whatever they're working on.
- TeacherThank you!
- Bugscope TeamThe resolution of the microscope is about 1 nanometer. When we use the STEM detector (scanning transmission electron microscopy) we can go to about 0.67 nm, or 6.7 Angstroms
- Bugscope TeamIn context: a housefly, blown up 100,000x, would be 5/8 of a mile long.
- Bugscope TeamHere we're zoomed back out to the whole claw of the bee.
- 1:33 pm
- Bugscope TeamThe different joints on the bee's arm, or that of any insect, are called tarsi.
- Bugscope Teamthere is the stinger!
- Bugscope TeamIt's a pointy tube, like a doctor's needle, to inject venom.
- Bugscope TeamThe stinger is kind of dirty, as you can see. Its components slide, side by side, to help it cut into whatever it is stinging.
- Bugscope TeamStingers are sometimes also ovipositors; they're used to inject eggs into something, or someone, or just to place the eggs somewhere on a surface.
- Bugscope TeamThe sliding-for-cutting is kind of like a hedge trimmer or one of those big electric turkey carving knives.
- Bugscope TeamThere is a parasitic wasp, usually quite small, for every existing species of insect and every life stage of every species of insect
- Bugscope TeamParasitic wasps are also called parasitoids; they sting their prey to immobilize it and then inject their eggs into its body
- 1:38 pm
- Bugscope TeamStingers often have little barbs on them. We cannot see the barbs on this one, or not very well.
- Bugscope TeamPronounced ham - you - lie, btw.
- Bugscope TeamNo we don't know what that little thread is stuck in the zipper. Just random crud.
- Bugscope TeamWhen a honeybee stings a mammal, its stinger gets caught in our skin; when it tries to pull it out, the whole stinger and the little venom pump attached to it gets pulled out of the honeybee's body.
- TeacherThe students said it looks like a shower curtain
- Bugscope Teamyeah kind of like shower curtain rings
- Bugscope TeamExcept it doesn't hang from a rod, it hooks onto ANOTHER shower curtain.
- Bugscope TeamA bee has front wings and back wings, and these hooks grab them together sometimes.
- Bugscope Teambees are heavy creatures so they need the wingspan, but also need to be able to fit in small places, so nature came up with giving them 2 sets of wings and the ability to hook them together so the wings will act like one giant pair of wings
- Bugscope TeamThis is really cool as well. Hamuli clip the hind- and forewings of a wasp or bee together so that when they fly they are using two rather than four wings (with the two wings on each side clipped together).
- TeacherWhat is the function?
- Bugscope TeamOne hook is a hamulus. A bunch of them are hamuli. Biologists like Latin names.
- Bugscope TeamWhat we are looking at now is really odd -- a fiber of some sort, apparently, is caught in the hamuli
- Bugscope TeamSorry, I was wrong. It is exactly a shower curtain. The hooks are on the back wing. They latch onto a fold in the front wing, which would be the curtain rod.
- 1:44 pm
- Bugscope TeamThat's why we saved another preset of the hamuli from the other wing, as well
- Bugscope TeamPollen, coming up.
- Bugscope TeamThis pollen is really spiky, to stick to things better.
- 1:49 pm
- Bugscope TeamHamuli are on the leading edge of the hindwing and connect to the trailing edge of the forewing
- TeacherCould you pass control to Lily?
Bugscope TeamLily has control!
- Bugscope TeamLily's very own pollen is much smoother.
- Bugscope TeamSorry, just a sec...
- Bugscope TeamWe believe these are ragweed pollen but are not sure of that...
Bugscope Teamscott is right, there are different types of plants this could have come from, but we know ragweed looks like this so that's what we called it
- Bugscope TeamStill working on Lily pollen
- Bugscope Teamtotally cool
- 1:55 pm
- Bugscope TeamThey look a bit like puffed rice breakfast cereal.
- Bugscope TeamThe crackled background is the carbon tape that we stick all the bugs to, before putting the collection in the microscope.
- Bugscope TeamWe get this directly from the flowers...
- StudentThank you so much! We are closing up and appreciate you working with us today!
- Bugscope Teamthanks for joining us today. we look forward to tomorrow's group!
- Bugscope TeamThank you all! Have a great day!
- Bugscope TeamOver and out
