Rachel Hewey, Week 10

 

    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 have to go back and find them or have one of the other students look for me. We did not do much on Thursday except for mail the pools. On Friday I had my second seminar zoom meeting and got to hear about the guest speakers experience working with mosquitoes.

    This week I learned that putting on long sleeves is a must for going out in the woods at this time of year. The mosquitoes and biting flies are so bad at our sites. I also wear 100% deet and a bug net over my head. Something that we all learned this week was that one of our pools of culex tested positive for Flanders, but I don’t believe this disease is a threat to humans. I hope that our group can find EEE at our sites because no one has done surveillance in St. Lawrence County even though we have had many horse deaths. 

    One last thing that I learned throughout this whole internship is that I really enjoyed doing this kind of work! We had a good mix of field and lab work, and I became an expert at identifying species of mosquitoes in my area. I hope to find a job with similar aspects next summer.

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