Reece Reckart: GCHD First Post

 The first trimester of my internship at Garrett County Health Department: Environmental Services has been very exciting and extremely insightful. On my first day I went to help give presentation to elementary school classes and learned how to sample. After that it was off to the races, going out every day and collecting ticks for testing. There were plenty of cool things to see that weren't just ticks as well, spiders, moths, butterflies, and a bunch of other bugs. With probably the coolest I found was a state endangered Baltimore Checkerspot. Which was a really, really cool sight to see.





That being said that doesn't mean I was diverting time from finding ticks as well. With the two typical ticks for me to find being Ixodes scapularis and Dermacentor variabilis, those unfortunately weren't the only two species I found in the area. I had also found invasive Haemaphysalis longicornis (Asian long-horned tick) and more notably Amblyomma americanum (the lone star tick). Upon finding these I started to do more research into how different soil types affect the ticks and where they live, how different flora could affect them, and the likelihood of contracting the different pathogens that all of the ticks carry. I have lots of plans for outreach in the month of July so I am looking forward to that and can't wait to share my experiences!

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 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

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