NEVBD-TEC Summer Internship Program

 Hello everyone! Welcome to week 7 . Hope you all are fine. Starting with this week , we went to new place Laurel Lake for ticks surveillance. This week was little different but exciting. The ride took us about 35 minutes to reach. While we going , we saw some cute tomatoes farms on our way. The weather was pretty good and me and my interns with our permethrin sprayed went for ticks sampling. Also, it is so great for me to know about the work of mosquitoes and ticks. This place had lots of deer ticks larvae. It took us much time for looking out them on the dragging flag. Apart from deer ticks, we also found out lone star nymph. This time I looked out for another species of mushrooms as so called as “ Agaricus” . My supervisor explained about its habit and features. I was great to know about them . The next day, we did some lab work and looked for ticks and mosquitoes identification. Also, I read an article related to “INTEGRATED MARSH MANAGEMENT AND MOSQUITOES CONTROL”. This articl...

Continuing from last week, this week was also a nice balance of both tick and mosquito field work. On Monday, we visited two of our routine field sites for mosquito larvae: Smith Point and Timber Point. Similar to the other mosquito sites Suffolk County has, these places were part of restoration projects several years ago to improve the conditions on the marsh. A major component of these projects is continuously monitoring the mosquito breeding, which is why we visit these sites frequently. While my supervisor and some of the other interns got a few larvae in their dips, I did not find anything on Monday. Wednesday was a pretty exciting day, since we were heading to a new mosquito site in Brookhaven, NY. This spot was flagged by some of Suffolk County's field workers for having an elevated mosquito presence, so we decided to do some investigating. The photo below shows one of our supervisors, Nick, trying to find a stable path through the phragmites in order to access the marsh. Su...

This week started with something a little different and very fun! On Monday, we spent the day at the Delaware State Fair in Dover, representing the Delaware Tick Program as part of DNREC’s Division of Fish and Wildlife. Our job was to help with public outreach and educate people about ticks, common tick-borne diseases, and prevention tips. It was great to see how interested and grateful people were to learn more about ticks and our work. We also had some fun activities for kids, like tick maze and word search that our coworker made for us, to help them get curious about nature in a safe way. Since we were there all day, I also got a few breaks to enjoy the fair—there were so many cute animals from all over the state! In the evening, we helped students from the University of Delaware with Sherman trapping for small mammals like mice at Brandywine Creek State Park. That night, we checked 180 traps to see if they were sprung or unsprung, and whether they still had seeds for bait. We only ...

 Hello everyone! Hope you all are doing great! We are going to week 6 and let’s start with our blog. Monday was very exciting day for me as we went for ticks surveillance to south- Hampton. The drive was nearly around 40 minutes and we spent our whole day sampling. Me and my interns recorded all the data taken from two grid sites. Most of our samples were Lone star nymph. Meanwhile, we came across many species of mushrooms. Thanks to our supervisor, who gave us information about these mushrooms. It was great to know about them. Furthermore, the next day we stayed at lab and this time I read about background history, food habit and life cycle of ticks from the book” biology of ticks” edited by Daniel E soneshine. Moving further, our supervisor also told us some useful tips to identify the adult mosquitoes, the key differences about culex, Aedes and psophora species. Wednesday was long day as we spent our sampling for larvae at “ Gardener”. The day was super hot and we just found out...

This week was an exciting mix of both tick and mosquito work. Monday and Friday were both spent collecting ticks, and we were out on the marshes collecting mosquito larvae Tuesday through Thursday. Monday was particularly enjoyable just because the interns and I visited a new tick site in Southhampton! We still mostly found lone star nymphs ( Amblyomma americanum ), but we did come across a small patch of deer tick larvae ( Ixodes scapularis ) as well as both an Asian longhorned adult and nymph ( Haemaphysalis longicornis ). With all of the ticks we've been looking at, I am able to identify the ticks in the field for the majority of the samples we collect. Specifically, it's the long palpi —sensory organs that help comprise a tick's mouthpiece —that distinguish the lone star ticks from the other species we find in the field. Whether from a dorsal (top) or ventral (bottom) view, the lone star ticks are easily identifiable. On the other hand, the Asian longhorned ticks, for e...

       On Monday, I went to my usual site to set up light and gravid traps as well as collect from resting boxes. Then, we went back to the lab and sorted through the catches at each site. We always make sure to log our findings based on the specific site and trap they were caught in. On Tuesday, I went back to the same site and collected the light trap, gravid trap, and collected from resting boxes again. We also sorted through each catch back at the lab. On Wednesday, I went to the site for the last time and collected mosquitoes from resting boxes and the gravid trap. Then we sorted through those at the lab, and I went to one of the other sites to collect them from there as well. We only have two aspirators, so we must do the closest site after we finish the further two sites.   I haven’t been to this site in a while, so it was nice to get out there one more time before my internship ended. However, I lost my sunglasses when we were out there, so I’ll either h...

 This week was packed with variety and new experiences! On Monday , we checked the marshes after a large spray to see if any mosquito larvae were still alive. While walking through different areas, we recorded important environmental details: weather, temperature, humidity, wind direction, and marsh conditions. We also disassembled a gravid trap, which is used to catch female mosquitoes looking for a place to lay eggs. These mosquitoes are drawn in and sucked into a small container—I've attached a photo below to show what it looks like. Later in the afternoon, I helped identify ticks collected by the tick team earlier that day. On Tuesday , I joined the tick team and we traveled all the way to Sussex County to check parks for tick activity. Thankfully, it wasn’t too hot! We came across a huge number of tick larvae and used lint rollers to collect them from the flags—there were so many! At one of the spots, we found a snake near the trail, so we carefully moved it deeper into the ...

 This week I spent most of my time diving deep into babesiosis, a tick-borne disease that’s becoming more common in the Northeast. While I’d heard of Lyme disease before, babesiosis was new to me, and researching it really opened my eyes to how complex and underrecognized it is. My assignment focused on studying how babesiosis is transmitted, its symptoms, and how it’s tracked and reported by public health departments. I was especially interested in how it differs from other tick-borne illnesses, since it’s caused by a parasite rather than a bacterium. It infects red blood cells, kind of like malaria, which makes it even more interesting from a biology standpoint. I also looked at how co-infections with Lyme or anaplasmosis can complicate diagnosis and treatment. One of the challenges was narrowing down the information. There’s a lot of ongoing research into babesiosis, especially since it's now a reportable disease in several states. But I wanted to focus on the public health aspe...

 Week 3 at GCHD Things are continuing smoothly in and out of the office. This week, a lot of my time was spent creating a draft for an updated version of the “Tick Surveillance” website. This is one of my boss, Melinda’s, main goals for my time here. She wants information about tick surveillance and safety to be easily accessible to residents and visitors of the county, and having an updated version of the website available would help make this possible. We wanted some information specific to the data we’ve collected in the area, as well as general information thats useful elsewhere (such as bite prevention, removal, etc).  In addition to working on the website, I also spent some time compiling data and information about tick-borne diseases, with the goal of sending out a memo to healthcare providers in the area. We focused on pathogens spread by I. scapularis , using our data from the CDC in the past 2 years.  I also made it a point to discuss co-infection, as that is an...

 Week 2 at GCHD: A Week in the Field This week was dominated by field work. I spent the majority of the time outdoors, collecting samples of ticks at a number of locations throughout the county. Meteorologists were predicting rain the week following, so I made an effort to complete a solid amount of tick drags in preparation.  I have the goal of completing 10+ tick drags every 2 weeks, weather permitting. There are many different hiking/recreational trails throughout the area as the county is situated firmly in the Appalachian mountains, so I’m never to be short of places to go. I did about 10 tick drags this week, which ended up being a bit tiring but rewarding. I enjoyed the time outside in the sun, and managed to collect a number of ticks, as their nymph population tends to be high this time of year. I. scapularis was the dominant tick population at all of the sites I sampled that week. Most of the trails we collected ticks from were forested areas with short vegetation. I...

 I like to think that I'm getting the hang of writing these blog posts, but it's still a little difficult to try and write as much as the other wonderful people doing this internship did!      On Monday, I was overjoyed because this was the first week that I would be able to set IR Traps for the egg rafts. Ironically enough, while I mentioned that the seasonal who joined last week would be able to drive me around, that wouldn't be the case for this day. However, I decided to use my own car to pick up all the light traps on my own and set up the IR traps with my own car, and figure out the reimbursements later on. It was pretty exciting to just be driving out on my own to collect Light traps and place the IR traps nearby. I used my own knowledge of what I saw when sorting the light traps to place the buckets near high populations of mosquitoes.      On Tuesday, my coworker (the seasonal) was able to drive me, and we set out all the way to the bottom of ...

This past week, we transitioned away from setting fish traps and returned to our routine mosquito surveillance. On Tuesday, we got the opportunity to visit a new site in Mastic Beach. While we were there, I collected my most abundant larvae sample to date. There were about 50 larvae from one dip, and the water was extremely shallow, so I wasn't even filling my dipper all the way. Usually, if there are larvae present in the dips, I average around two to three, so this was definitely a surprise. We ended the week on Friday by doing a morning surveillance sweep of Gardiner Park. The interns and I were just there the week prior collecting fish traps. However, there was an incredibly noticeable difference in the amount of adult mosquitoes flying around. This made dipping the marshes there a bit more difficult, but the stretches of land close to the water received a nice breeze, which pretty much made those areas mosquito free. A highlight of the week was getting the opportunity to speak...

Last week was either too hot or too wet to conduct any tick drags. My days consisted of processing ticks that were mailed into the Virginia Department of Health that had been removed from humans, after being found feeding or found crawling on them. The flow of mails changes each week, but last week was particularly a heavy amount of mail. Which is odd because we have been noticing with tick drags as of late that the ticks have been going into hiding due to the extremely high temperatures the state has been experiencing. It is seeming like the tick season is coming to an end and the people that are sending in ticks might just be in areas where the ticks are holding out the heat or are in the areas during a time of day when ticks are more active.

 Hello everyone! Hope you all are well. Let’s start with our week 5 blog. Starting with Monday as the weather was not too good so probably we stayed at office whole day. For first few hours I did ticks surveillance and I started writing out the physical appearance and their characteristics of most three common ticks- Lone star ticks, Deer ticks and American dog ticks. After my lunch break, I started reading the article of Drosophila melanogaster which explains how hormones regulate the life span and reproduction stage of their life. The Next day- Tuesday we went to west beach to look out for mosquitoes sampling and hardly found any samples. After spending few hours at the marsh, we came back to the office and I continued reading my article. The next morning we continued our journey for sampling and spent out time at west bay. This time we hardly got any larvae sample and so I feel like the area was pretty free clean for mosquitoes. The next couple of days we checked Timberpoint and...

       We first made dry ice and set up our light traps and gravid traps on Monday. We also aspirated the resting boxes and sorted through the catches like usual. Something that we did different was take the light out of the light traps to hopefully get less bycatch. On Tuesday, we collected from light traps, gravid traps, and resting boxes. We sorted through each relatively quickly. We noticed that the light traps did not catch nearly as much bycatch or mosquitoes and wondered if this was because of the light or because it stormed badly that night. For this reason, we set up the light traps again on Wednesday without the light to see if we would catch more but we did not. However, on the second day of sampling we found a new species in our light traps called Aedes Trivittatus. This was very exciting for us because a graduate student at a local college has been looking for this species and we are either going to send them there or to our regular lab.    ...

 It’s hard to believe week six has already come and gone! This week gave me even more insight into the work we do at DNREC and some surprising facts that I’ll definitely never forget. On Monday, we went out in the morning to drag for ticks at three different parks. In the afternoon, we stayed indoors since it started to rain. We used that time to identify the ticks we had just collected and also picked up some additional samples from local veterinary clinics. One thing that really stood out to me this week was just how tiny tick larvae are. When they get on the flag, they’re so small they almost look like ground black pepper sprinkled across the fabric. It’s very easy to miss them, so checking the flag thoroughly is super important. The tricky part is that when larvae are present, there’s usually a lot of them grouped together—making it both interesting and challenging to collect. On Tuesday, we headed back down to Sussex County to continue our regular tick collections at two of ou...

This week was a short one, but still an exciting one! While I was sorting the Light trap, I received an email stating that I had the supplies needed to start collecting egg rafts. This sparked a little scavenger hunt to determine exactly where the package was delivered. We spent a fair amount of time before we discovered that it was somehow delivered near the pesticide shed out back and had a good laugh about it. In addition to this, a new seasonal started working at the department, which would become a great help to me as she would be able to drive me around in a county vehicle most of the time. I hope you all had a happy 4th!

 Hello everyone! Welcome to week 4 blog. This week was pretty much focused on fish trapping. We went to many marshes to set out fish traps. Starting from Monday, we went to smith point and set out fish traps at 8 different pooled holes. The fish trap is made up of steel wire with cone shaped vessel and while setting up the trap, two traps are joint together and dip it inside the water. Side by side we were looking for our mosquitoes samplings and in case we found out any larvae in pooled holes then we marked it under survey app. After this we came back to the office and our supervisor taught us about the species of fishes which are commonly found in Long Island. He explained about their physical appearance and their characteristics. Let’s move to another day. Tuesday was pretty busy day and we spent whole day at field sites. At first, we went to smith point to look for our fish traps and really we found out good numbers of muumichag fishes. We recorded the data under recorder sheet...

 Hello everyone! Welcome to my week3 blog . This week was balanced of lab work and field stuff. I got a vast knowledge of mosquitoes and ticks after with my two weeks of internship. Starting our day at Fire Island on Monday. It took us more than 30 minutes to reach this spot. I like this Island as there were many beautiful sites to visit this island. However, the temperature was pretty high which is more than 90 degrees. Me and my other interns started looking for mosquitoes surveillance. After done with our samplings we found out two spots for mosquitoes larvae. Most interesting part was using pesticide blower, where our supervisor taught us how to use it. It was pretty much enjoyable. Our whole day spent out in Fire Island. The next day, we went to Islip town beach for our samplings. I like the beach and also we found out some crabs while we sampling out. The day spent well and it was really awesome to explore the area and understand the pooled holes in marshes. The next day whic...

  Hello everyone! Hope you all are well? Now, I am writing how I spent my week 2 at Suffolk county vector control. Starting with Monday, at first we did ticks identification and I found out lone star ticks the most in my samples. After I did with my tick sampling then I started looking for species of mosquitoes. Thanks to Nicholas who gave us the key book to identify the species of mosquitoes and so me and my interns were looking for species of mosquitoes with the help of key-book. After all this I was then able to identify ticks and mosquitoes species. The next day we went for mosquitoes sampling at Brookhaven and the weather was pretty good, we spent our half of the day sampling and luckily I got three larvae samples. We came back and look under the microscope to identify the species of mosquitoes. Oh god! It took longer time to identify and unfortunately I could not identify it. I took the help from my supervisor who explained me how to identify the mosquitoes species. Now let’s...

 This past week had a lot of rainy days and I only had the opportunity to do a tick drag on Thursday, right before we had the 4th of July. I took a trip up to Stafford County, VA and went to two different sites, the Stafford Civil War Park and Crows Nest Natural Preserve Area. At Stafford Civil War Park, the ground was still a bit wet when I got there but under the trees it was good enough to collect ticks. I was able to collect 19 ticks, which were mostly lone star ticks. At Crows Nest Natural Preserve Area, the ground was still wet as well even at 12pm. The forest was not the most accessible and the amount of giant spider webs that I ran it made my skin crawl, but was unable to get any ticks in the forest oddly, but right outside forest I was able to get 5 ticks, mostly lone star ticks again. I had to cut that drag early due to a random pop up rain storm that completely soaked the area again.

 Hello! My name is Jashandeep Singh, a rising senior at Nyit university and currently i am doing summer internship at the Suffolk County vector control that mainly works on tick and mosquitoes surveillance.  We got a tour of the building, met the entomologists, and talked about mosquito and tick control projects, as well as site restoration work during first two days.I liked learning about the common ticks on Long Island, like deer ticks, American dog ticks, rabbit ticks and lone star ticks. On Tuesday, we spent most of the day looking at tick samples under a microscope and practicing how to identify them. For the rest of the week, we went to different field sites like timber point, gardener park each morning to collect and record mosquito larvae. In the afternoons, we looked at the larvae under a microscope and used dichotomous keys to practice identifying them. The field sites are very pretty, but I’m still getting used to walking in the marshes with hip boots. The plants ar...

This past week was focused on fish surveillance in the various marsh sites we are responsible for. While not direct vectors for disease transmission, the fish populations serve as an important indicator for the mosquito populations, since the fish consume mosquito larvae. Additionally, the number of fish we sample might influence the amount of chemical pesticide that is sprayed, since the fish can be a means of biological control. At each marsh site, we set eight fish traps. I provided a picture of what the traps we use look like below. The fish swim into the larger opening in the center of the cone. We take our sample from the traps 24 hours after we set the traps. For all of the fish we collect, we measure them from head to tail and identify the species. Additionally, we note how many fish are alive/dead; unfortunately, the collection of fish in the traps creates a low oxygen environment, so it is common for some fish to be dead at the time of sampling. The vast majority of the fish ...

  This week we set out traps on Monday like usual, but we also started trapping at a new site and added more resting boxes to each site. Our goal with these improvements is to catch more of the target species and to send them into the lab for testing. On Tuesday, we vacuumed out all the resting boxes and took the light trap container back to our lab to sort. We sorted through all the traps on Tuesday and finished up the pools on Wednesday. We also made more resting boxes after we finished sorting. We did not work on Thursday or Friday because it was the 4 th of July and the lab was closed so we had to drive the samples down the day before. We found two new species in our traps this week that we had never seen before. Because of this, I now know how to easily identify these two species. The first species has very distinct blue scales on the side of its scutum when put under a light and is very small. The other species is large and has purple looking scales on its abdomen when put u...

       This week felt short because of the 4th of July holiday Friday, but it was still packed with interesting work and new things to learn!      On Monday, we traveled to Sussex County again to collect ticks in local parks. On the way back, we also picked up tick samples from several veterinary clinics that had collected them from their clients’ pets. Once we returned to the office, we worked on identifying the ticks. Even though I’ve been doing tick ID work for the past four weeks (and even had some experience before the internship), I still find it tricky sometimes! There were moments I looked through the microscope and thought, “I have no idea what I’m looking at,” or “This looks so familiar, but I can’t remember what it is.” That’s when I turn to our field guides and dichotomous keys or ask one of our experienced team members for help. It’s all part of learning, and it’s nice to know that no one expects you to know everything right away.  ...

     This week has been fun as well! I've been doing more shadowing on selecting locations and collecting egg rafts! I hope to start doing it on my own once I receive the Collection Kit and the Bottle assays next week. In addition, a new seasonal worker is coming on Wednesday. Someone who can help me set up IR traps next week! We had more larval samples that I was able to do identification for in practice for the mosquitoes I will be rearing after we set up and collect the traps.     As a fun side note, I learned about the possibility of box tree moths in NJ and might get the chance to aid in placing traps while keeping an eye out for them in the light traps!