Week 7 (Nicole Shevera)

 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 the county and made our way up, collecting the gravitrap she placed and the IR traps. I'll admit that my hopes were not high due to previous results from IR traps, but to my surprise, when checking one of our traps, I used up all of the nine bags I brought for the multitude of egg rafts I found. There weren't as many in the other traps as there were in this trap, but this was still amazing! I also learned how to FedEx overnight for the very first time! (Haha!)

    My time on Wednesday focused on reviewing our Gravid traps and preparing vials that would be sent and tested for various diseases on Thursday. We had noticed a surprisingly low number of mosquitoes when using a specific net, so we decided to test it by setting up two nets with different types.

    Thursday was a change of scenery! I helped in a class about testing water quality and discovered that the stream we were using had a poorer quality than I had first thought. Don't judge a book by its cover! Afterwards, I went back to sorting and organizing the Light trap samples. There's always a lot to go through!

    Friday ended with more time spent working on the increasing number of light traps to sort through.

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