NEVBD-TEC Summer Internship Program

 Week 10: A Fun (and Busy) End This was my last week at the Health Department, which was naturally a bit bittersweet. Though I’m eager to get home to spend time with my family and friends, I’ve had a great time working for the office and learning about vector-borne diseases. Thankfully, this week was decently busy, so I got to spend time helping out in a lot of ways to get through this final stretch.              I started off the week mostly doing fieldwork, as it had rained at the end of the week last week and I suspected I may be able to find some larger tick counts. Since it’s now August, tick counts were still pretty low, but I managed to find a bunch of larvae throughout the county, and the occasional nymph still looking for a blood meal. Oddly enough, when I was at one of our more forested locations, I managed to find an adult female  H. longicornis  tick, which was the first time I had found one myse...

 Week 9: A Week at the County Fair In order to ensure engagement with a greater amount of the county’s population, Melinda had me spend my evenings this week at the county’s annual agricultural fair, an event that brings out many faces that weren’t necessarily at the birthday bash. I spent several evenings at the fair nearby other local organizations, and shared some of our resources for tick prevention, removal, awareness, etc.  I met a ton of friendly faces that appreciated the information, and several kids that had fun with a tick-themed game I had at the booth. When things weren't busy, I ended up crocheting a female Ixodes and Dermacentor tick to pass the time. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a heat wave coming through during that week, and the barn my booth was in was not air-conditioned. Though the weather was a bit unpleasant, I enjoyed my time conversing with the locals in the area and their experiences with ticks.  As a result of me spending my evenings workin...

 Week 8 at GCHD Things are starting to wind down as my last few weeks are upon me. I mostly completed field work, trying to take advantage of the pleasant weather and completing tick drags throughout the county. Tick populations are still dwindling, though I have noticed an upward trend in the amount of  Ixodes  larvae at many of the locations I’ve been to. I also managed to find one  Dermacentor  adult female (who was looking a little worse for wear), which was unexpected considering how late in the year it was for adults. In the office, I continued compiling our budget report and found some things for us to order for future events. I came across some customizable keychains that had both a flashlight and a magnifying glass on them, and Melinda and I thought it would be a good idea to include those with our tweezers and infographics. I also ended up creating a poster about our research efforts and results that summarizes the data we’ve collected so far.  We...

 Week 7: The Deep Creek Birthday Bash This week was the week of the “Deep Creek Birthday Bash,” and so much of the week was spent in preparation for that. Outside of my regular field work, which I do 3-4 days a week, I spent time in the office gathering and organizing supplies we might need. We decided on a number of materials, including fine-tipped tweezers, our tick-prevention rack card, images of ticks and some of our data, and some of the samples of ticks we use for public events such as this.  In addition to preparations for the fair, I also started on compiling and updating our current budget for tick collection and educational supplies. A lot of our funding comes through an annual grant from the CDC, so Melinda has to prepare a detailed budget for all the things she uses throughout the year. I started researching some materials that may be useful for educational purposes, looking at a number of possible supplies and goodies she can use when presenting at schools and pub...

 Week 6 at GCHD As July progresses, it’s getting closer and closer to my first major public event with the ticks (excluding my brief visit to the elementary school weeks prior). Some local organizations in the area decided to throw a “birthday party” for a local lake, and several offices at the health department are planning to be in attendance, including my own.  I also worked on getting all the  H. longicornis  ticks we had in storage sent over to the state lab for testing. Along with the one we had discovered a few weeks prior, we had some in storage from the previous year, preserved in ethanol at 4C. Our point of contact at the state lab was interested in testing them for pathogens, and we ended up sending all life stages (larva, nymphs, and an adult female) to the lab. Things with our graphic designer and the tick prevention rack card are finishing up. He sent us the finalized version of the card, so it is ready to be sent for printing. The infographic ended up ...

 Week 4 at GCHD The heat wave that took place this week was brutal. I still ended up spending a lot of the week outdoors, but both me and the ticks were feeling the impacts of the heat. Populations were a bit smaller than in weeks past, likely due to both the sweltering heat and the approach of July, a time where the counties’ tick populations tend to dwindle.  Melinda and I also made the decision t o update some more of the Department’s resources, namely an infographic about tick checks/removal that we give out at public events. It works well as it is, with clear, easy to understand information that serves a useful reminder. However, we both felt that we could do more with the space we had. We decided to work on creating a section of the card with information on tick prevention at home (common methods to keep ticks out of the yard, to be specific). We collaborated with each other and consulted some online resources before deciding on a final list.   In order to make the ...

Week 5: Projects in Progress      Week five didn’t end up being very busy, but I still managed to find some things to do. I spent a lot of time in the field, and noticed that in some places, the tick populations have started dwindling and the summer stretches onward. At this point, I rarely, if ever, find any adult   Ixodes   ticks, just the occasional male looking for a mate. For the most part, I’ve mainly been coming across nymphs and some larva (though I’ve yet to find any nests), as well as some interesting bugs.        When I was in the office, I found time to finalize and edit a lot of the things I’ve been working on so far. The graphic designer and I communicated regularly about the content and style of the infographic we’re working on. While Melinda and I focused on curating the most important content for the limited space, he worked on creating drawings and maximizing the space we had.        A challenge I faced w...

 Hello everyone! Hope you are well! This week was pretty busier than other weeks. We did fishing stuff which I found it interesting. Monday was the day, when we went to collect our traps. The site was Gardener and the traps were set beforehand by our supervisor. There were in total 16 traps. The weather was super hot but we enjoyed a lot by taking the measurements of fishes. This time we collected more than 200 fishes in each traps. Apart from fishes, we also had eel and crabs. The fishes were varied in numbers and species. Mummichag and sheepshead were the common species that we found over that site. I was doing the work of taking the measurement of fishes. The day was pretty longer and we spent half our day at that site. After we did our data work , we went to Timber point to set out 8 traps. Letsmove to Tuesday, where we did fishing stuff and recorded the data at Timber point and set out traps for West Sayville. Surprisingly! The number of fishes were pretty high at each sites a...

This past week, we conducted our second week of fish sampling, our first week being 4 weeks ago. We followed similar procedures compared to the beginning of July. Overall, the interns and I were definitely more efficient with the data collection, and we were able to complete sampling from four different sites by the end of Wednesday. This week, the heat was a bit extreme, reaching up into the nineties for most of our time on the marshes. Additionally, we were finding a lot more fish than we did the first week of sampling. When we sample, we measure in millimeters the first 30 fish of each species that we catch, and then we just count the rest of the fish and record the total number. During the entirety of our first week, there were more than 30 fish of one species (mummichog, for example), in only two of the traps that we set. However, this week, an extremely large majority of the traps had more than 30 fish; some of our traps had fish numbers in the hundreds. While mummichogs ( Fundul...

          This week started with me checking on a test run with the only egg raft I was able to collect last week! Sure enough, I was greeted by tiny larvae in the morning. This helped build a basis of what to do with the egg rafts I hoped to collect this week! Unfortunately, yet again, I was unable to collect the required number of samples, even in the new location I had placed. This surprised me, as the gravid traps placed in these areas had definitely indicated a large number of mosquitoes breeding in these areas.           Talking to the homeowners of the places we visited  and finding a possible digger wasp (Pretty!) was a highlight that made things better. This week ended with me placing more of the IR traps, organizing gravid traps, and IDing light traps.

Welcome back to another week!      I began on Monday by joining my coworker to set gravid traps and set my own IR traps like I did last week. Based on last week, two of the three sites I placed these traps in were a success. The last site, unfortunately, tipped over with the rain, so I decided to attempt it again in a more secure spot. while assessing possible new locations from the gravid traps we set.      I was hit hard with the news of the thunderstorms that had occurred overnight, which worried me about the results of the traps. The trap that yielded the most results had three egg rafts that I would be able to use; I could not say the same for the other two. It is heavily raining as I am typing this! I finished this day working on making a dent in the unsorted Light traps.     Once again, I went out with my co-worker to place new gravid traps and hopefully test out new sites in which I can place the IR traps for better results. I discovered o...

     Monday was a very special day—we received chickens that were specifically raised for our mosquito surveillance project! Working with the mosquito control team, we carefully collected a small amount of blood from a vein under each chicken’s wing. These chickens were then placed in secure, shaded boxes at our usual mosquito trap locations, each with access to two water sources and food. To make sure they don't feel isolated, we placed them in pairs. These chickens help us monitor for mosquito-borne viruses: if infected mosquitoes bite them, we can detect virus markers in their blood the following weeks. Important note—the virus doesn’t harm the chickens at all. They stay healthy and are well cared for!      We spent Tuesday in three local parks with the tick surveillance team. During breaks, we also collected small insects like flies, ants, and beetles to learn how to properly pin and preserve them later. On the way back, I spotted a red velvet ant—a ver...