NEVBD-TEC Summer Internship Program

I can’t believe my internship has come to an end. This summer was an incredible experience, traveling throughout Delaware, conducting tick dragging and tick identification, assisting with the sentinel chicken program, participating in outreach events, and working with a wide variety of wildlife.  One of my favorite experiences has been assisting with Delaware’s sentinel chicken surveillance program for West Nile Virus.  We deployed 36 chickens to nine different sites throughout the state. Each week, we visited the sites to monitor the chickens and collect blood samples, which are tested to determine whether the birds have been exposed to West Nile Virus. This surveillance helps detect virus activity early and provides valuable information for mosquito control before human cases occur.  I also had the opportunity to participate in bat banding, where I primarily served as a scribe because I have not received my rabies vaccine and was not able to handle the bats directl...

 As I am closing my time a the Department of Public Health in Philadelphia, I find that I have grown quite fond of the work done at the Vector Control sector. While not always glamorous (many mosquito bites and one too many ticks hitching a ride on us) I find that active field work- rain or shine- is exactly what I enjoy doing.  Throughout the program we have done various things to aid in the collection, identification, and record keeping of disease spreading mosquitos. I learned how to take dips, which involved collecting samples of mosquito larvae in stagnant water in order to identify the types of mosquitos present in an area. Furthermore, I learned how to set and collect BG and Gravid traps, which focus on attracting and capturing human-seeking and gravid mosquitos respectively. And most importantly, I learned essential skills including but not limited to how to handle critical disease carrying organisms, how to process and take record of said organisms, and how to properl...

As the internship continued, I was able to build on the field skills I developed during the first month while being introduced to several new projects. By this point, I felt much more comfortable with the sampling techniques we had learned, which allowed me to focus more on understanding why we collect the information and how it contributes to public health decisions. One of the highlights of this part of the internship was participating in nekton sampling. We set fish traps, identified the species we collected, and recorded our observations. Before this internship, I had never considered how fish populations could be connected to mosquito habitats. It was interesting to see how aquatic ecosystems are monitored and how collecting information about these environments provides a broader understanding of the conditions that influence mosquito development. As we rotated back into mosquito and tick surveillance, I started noticing how much conditions could change from week to week. Altho...

July was a really interesting, informative and cool time to be doing tick survey's with the Garrett County Health Department. Seeing the transition from seeing mostly Ixodes scapularis  adults and nymphs to almost only finding larvae. Of course with it transitioning to this trend there is also a lot more ticks to find as well! There was also a lot of outreach this month as well, from helping with classroom to going to local fairs and events. Helping answer questions that people have about ticks and livestock, how to mitigate ticks in their own yards, and just hearing people stories really reminded me of how many people I am helping. I haven't been able to take very many pictures this month however, which was kind of a bummer but it was really cool to find milkweed absolutely covered with monarch caterpillars! 

 During my seventh and eighth week at the Suffolk County Arthropod Borne Disease Laboratory, I worked all around Long Island going to different county parks to collect ticks for state evaluation and testing. I have had amazing experiences traveling to different parks, I found it very interesting that some sites on different parts of the island would have different numbers of each species. I also got familiar with recognizing larval ticks, rabbit ticks, and Asian Longhorned ticks. I spent much of my time at the microscope, which I found to be my favorite part of the job. I feel fully confident in my ability to ID ticks without the use of a microscope, but if I am ever confused my colleagues are always there to help me. I also advanced my research on tick expansion into the northeast due to climate change, with a focus on northeastern areas and public health implications. I also analyzed 2026 email data to track the increase in Lone Star tick abundance, and performed more research on...

This internship has been an absolute blast so far! Since starting this internship I have grown very fascinated about ticks and not only how to control them, but what can be done to help the general public feel safer as well. Over the course of the last few weeks, we have been to multiple outreach events, ranging from five years old's in a 4-H camp to anyone at the Delaware State Fair.  While participating in outreach for younger kids, we developed a ‘Tick Bagel’ that was covered in poppy seeds and ticks to show their size comparison. The activity worked as a fun eye-spy game for kids to help get them interested in what a tick looked like, and how to identify them. We also played a fun tag game where some kids could act as a tick and others would be host animals. This allowed them to understand host-parasite relationships, and how some ticks prefer different species over others. Overall, they seemed to enjoy it and many had already known quite a bit about tick safety and identificat...