JASHANDEEP SINGH: WEEK 6 ( Mosquito and ticks surveillance)

 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 few spots for larvae. During our lunch break, our supervisor took us for lunch at the restaurant. The lunch was very delicious and me with other employees spent our time happily. Interestingly! We went to put the wooden block between two ditches by tightly hold them with rope. The place is called as “ East Islip” . It has beautiful views like mini playground and some photography sites. Friday was a day where we went for checking out mosquitoes. The net is placed on the water with funnel shaped structure  and the cup lid is placed on the top of it. It was placed in “ Lake Ronkonkoma” . Later afterwards, we had our second zoom meeting where Dr. Paul gave inspirational speech about his career and suggested advice how to get good job in the future. This was whole about week 6 and I hope you guys enjoyed. Thank you!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yuliia Skrypniuk - Week 10 with DNREC Fish and Wildlife Division

Image
     I can’t believe it’s already the final week of my internship! This week was full of fieldwork, learning, and some exciting last activities with both the tick and mosquito teams.      At the start of the week, I joined the tick team to visit three parks in northern Delaware for flag dragging. While tick numbers were low, we still managed to collect some Ixodes scapularis larvae (commonly known as deer ticks), which are important to track because they can carry Lyme disease.      On Tuesday, I joined the mosquito team for a boat trip out to the salt marshes. We checked water levels, monitored for mosquito larvae, and looked for adult mosquitoes to make sure everything was within acceptable levels. After lunch, we visited two more parks to collect ticks and monitor tick activity there as well.      Wednesday was all about mosquito trap collection. I spent the day with one of the seasonal workers, driving to different trap loc...
Read more

Joseph Fiscella: Week 9 at Suffolk County Vector Control

Image
This week marked our final week of tick sampling. The interns and I went to all three of our tick sites on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday for one last round of sampling for the season. As expected, the number of tick larvae was considerably high, but this was not a surprise since we have been collecting a lot of larvae for the past several weeks. To review, the two ticks that we find the most at our grids are the deer tick ( Ixodes scapularis ) and the lonestar tick (Amblyomma americanum ). However, I came across something fascinating on Tuesday after we took the samples back to the lab in order to confirm the tick counts. When I put some of the tick rolls under the microscope, I noticed that some of the larvae were shaped like the deer tick but had a slightly lighter coloration and less prominent mouth pieces (palpi). I called over one of my supervisors, Moses, for assistance. He determined that the tick was of the genus Ixodes , but it was definitely not a deer tick. The microscope I wa...
Read more

Joseph Fiscella: Week 10 at Suffolk County Vector Control

Image
This week was the tenth and final week of my internship at Suffolk County Vector Control, and it truly feels like the summer flew by. On Monday and Tuesday, we wrapped up our vegetation sampling at two additional marsh sites. There was not a huge amount of diversity in the species we found this week compared to last week, but there were some grids this week that contained Phragmites, a tall reed grass commonly found along the edges of the marshes. While the heat and humidity this week did make the vegetation sampling tough work, it was still enjoyable to participate in new methods of population surveillance. Our last outing of the summer was on Thursday. Vector Control was informed of areas in Patchogue, NY that had high mosquito numbers. We had never been to the site before, so it was a bit of investigative work. While we barely found any mosquito larvae in our dips, the sheer number of adult mosquitoes flying around was overwhelming. This, alongside the unevenness of the marsh floor,...
Read more