NEVBD-TEC Summer Internship Program

 Hey everyone, this has been quite the month, a lot of personal events happened and the start up of school is happening as well so I am sure everyone is quite busy. But don't forget to check yourself for ticks daily, remember the first 24 hours is the most important! The reason I bring that up is because we have the results back from our pathogen test and it really caused me to realize how many times over I could have contracted Lyme's if I wasn't doing my daily checks. This month was mostly just doing data analysis which is a crucial part of the process! It was really fun to help out at the Garrett County Health Department, I got to meet and connect with a lot of people who were able to help me with my job and I was able to help them in whatever way they needed as well, which I think is the most important part of these types of jobs, helping the community and building a level of trust with them so they are not scared to share their opinions and idea's with us! I really...

Wow, I can't believe the summer is already over and my time with NEVBD has wrapped up! The last couple of weeks have definitely been a rewarding way to close out my summer. One of our recent highlights has been opening a brand-new collection site in our county. After a season spent working at our established sites, it was exciting to set up somewhere new and learn how to set up all the traps in a new area. Another highlight was finally catching Uranotaenia sapphirina, a special species that is the basis of the blood-meal analysis project I mentioned earlier in the summer. It's a tiny mosquito named for its iridescent, sapphire-blue scales that give it a jewel-like shimmer under the microscope. It's unusual among mosquitoes for feeding primarily on invertebrates like earthworms and leeches rather than humans or other vertebrates. I definitely think it's one of the most beautiful mosquitoes we've seen all season, and I've featured a photo I took of one under a mic...

       As I finished up my internship with the St. Lawrence County Public Health’s Mosquito Research Team, I took the time to look back on how much I’ve learned and how much more confident I became in my position since the beginning of the summer, and after doing such, I can definitely say that I feel this experience has given me a much better understanding of both field and laboratory work in regards to entomological studies.      Throughout, my routine has stayed fairly consistent. Most mornings had been spent out in the field visiting our collection sites, checking and bringing in CDC, gravid, and DRB collections from our traps. In the afternoons, we brought our collections back to the lab and spent time identifying the mosquitoes under the microscopes down to their exact species. By the end of my time there, I had become much more comfortable with the whole mosquito identification process and rarely needed to rely on the dichotomous key for the spe...

Today marked the last day of my internship, and it is very safe to say I will miss it. I have met many amazing researchers, biologists, collectors, and many others! Working under Dr. Ashley Kennedy has not only inspired me to further advance in the world of Medical Entomology, but to be the best student and person I can be.  These last two weeks we have been able to revisit bird-banding, check out many insect collections from the 80's, and enjoy many teambuilding activities! I was also able to participate in the VBD Intern Symposium, where I got to share all of my awesome summer experiences with other interns, as well as see what other labs were studying! This has been one of the best internships I have ever been a part of, and has truly taught me about a whole other world of entomology and public health! Thank you NEVBD, DNREC, and everyone a part of this journey! Celebration of an Amazing Summer!

 It is time for my last blog post.. how crazy that 10 weeks have flown by and summer has come to an end! The experiences and knowledge I gained here will be carried with me for the rest of my life, whether it be basic research and field work skills, public interactions, or looking out for mosquitoes! I was also incredibly lucky to have a great group of girls with me, consisting of my co-intern and summer sanitarian, who made everyday feel like a new adventure!  In my final blog post I will tell you all about the organization of our data that we collected. On the field, once a trap is collected, whether BG Sentinel or Gravid, we would place a small piece of paper inside the trap that included the location, the date, time, and approximately how many mosquitos seemed to be inside the collected mesh/bags. At first, this was a horrifying experience as you are sticking your hand inside a bag that contains possibly hundreds of mosquitos, but as time went on, it became very routine! O...

 As my internship with Suffolk County Vector Control comes to an end, I have had the chance to look back at how much I have learned throughout the summer. Over the past several weeks, I have participated in mosquito and tick surveillance, nekton trapping, vegetation sampling, and other fieldwork that has given me a much better understanding of both vector control and environmental science. During the final part of the internship, we continued working with many of the sampling methods we had learned earlier in the summer. By this point, activities like mosquito and tick sampling had become much more familiar. Instead of focusing only on learning how to perform each procedure, I was able to pay more attention to the environmental conditions around us and understand why we were collecting the information in the first place. One of the biggest things I learned this summer was how unpredictable fieldwork can be. Weather constantly affected our schedule, and conditions could look complet...

 My time with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and the Aedes Albopictus survey/surveillance has come to an end. It has truly been a wonderful experience. I have learned so much and grown even more as a person. In the past few weeks, I continued my Aedes Albopcitus surveillance and route throughout Vermont. I then picked up all the traps and cleaned them back at the laboratory when the survey came to a conclusion. I was also able to conduct a tick drag in an area that we thought may have an Asian Longhorned Tick. Although we did not find any, I was able to find the only tick of the day, out of 5 of us conducting drags (although it was a Black-legged tick). I am so grateful to have had this experience this summer and am forever grateful to the Vermont Vector-Borne team. 

 While gravid traps made up most of our weekly trapping, we also worked with BG-Sentinel traps, which are designed to target more aggressive mosquitoes than the ones we catch in the gravid traps! These traps are set up completely different in comparison to gravid traps because instead of using "stink water," they use a fan, collection bag, 2 6-V batteries, and two attractants to draw mosquitoes in. The first attractant is dry ice which is a source of CO2, mimicking the carbon dioxide humans release when we breathe. The dry ice was hung right above the collection bag, usually from a nearby tree branch. The second attractant is called a "BG lure" which mimics what humans are supposed to smell like. PS: It smells unlike anything I could describe and definitely not what I think we smell like, so it is incredibly strange and cool! Another part of the internship that I really enjoyed was our days at community gardens. We would visit gardens throughout Philadelphia to look...

Here's my update on weeks 7–10 working at the Virginia Department of Health under the supervision of the Epidemiology team! Week 7: This week, we had the amazing opportunity to shadow a local health department's tick and mosquito surveillance efforts. It was exciting to compare the surveillance methods used at the state and local health department levels. We also observed how the team responded to a positive test for West Nile virus, including treating local waterways with larvicide to help prevent further mosquito breeding and reduce the risk of further positive tests. Week 8: This week brought a lot of rain, which made it difficult for me to complete my tick drags. Instead, I spent time analyzing data and continued meeting with leaders from different departments within the Epidemiology team. These meetings have allowed me to expand my professional network while gaining a broader understanding of the many areas and initiatives within epidemiology. Weeks 9 and 10: During my ...

I can’t believe my internship has come to an end. This summer was an incredible experience, traveling throughout Delaware, conducting tick dragging and tick identification, assisting with the sentinel chicken program, participating in outreach events, and working with a wide variety of wildlife.  One of my favorite experiences has been assisting with Delaware’s sentinel chicken surveillance program for West Nile Virus.  We deployed 36 chickens to nine different sites throughout the state. Each week, we visited the sites to monitor the chickens and collect blood samples, which are tested to determine whether the birds have been exposed to West Nile Virus. This surveillance helps detect virus activity early and provides valuable information for mosquito control before human cases occur.  I also had the opportunity to participate in bat banding, where I primarily served as a scribe because I have not received my rabies vaccine and was not able to handle the bats directl...

 As I am closing my time a the Department of Public Health in Philadelphia, I find that I have grown quite fond of the work done at the Vector Control sector. While not always glamorous (many mosquito bites and one too many ticks hitching a ride on us) I find that active field work- rain or shine- is exactly what I enjoy doing.  Throughout the program we have done various things to aid in the collection, identification, and record keeping of disease spreading mosquitos. I learned how to take dips, which involved collecting samples of mosquito larvae in stagnant water in order to identify the types of mosquitos present in an area. Furthermore, I learned how to set and collect BG and Gravid traps, which focus on attracting and capturing human-seeking and gravid mosquitos respectively. And most importantly, I learned essential skills including but not limited to how to handle critical disease carrying organisms, how to process and take record of said organisms, and how to properl...

As the internship continued, I was able to build on the field skills I developed during the first month while being introduced to several new projects. By this point, I felt much more comfortable with the sampling techniques we had learned, which allowed me to focus more on understanding why we collect the information and how it contributes to public health decisions. One of the highlights of this part of the internship was participating in nekton sampling. We set fish traps, identified the species we collected, and recorded our observations. Before this internship, I had never considered how fish populations could be connected to mosquito habitats. It was interesting to see how aquatic ecosystems are monitored and how collecting information about these environments provides a broader understanding of the conditions that influence mosquito development. As we rotated back into mosquito and tick surveillance, I started noticing how much conditions could change from week to week. Altho...

July was a really interesting, informative and cool time to be doing tick survey's with the Garrett County Health Department. Seeing the transition from seeing mostly Ixodes scapularis  adults and nymphs to almost only finding larvae. Of course with it transitioning to this trend there is also a lot more ticks to find as well! There was also a lot of outreach this month as well, from helping with classroom to going to local fairs and events. Helping answer questions that people have about ticks and livestock, how to mitigate ticks in their own yards, and just hearing people stories really reminded me of how many people I am helping. I haven't been able to take very many pictures this month however, which was kind of a bummer but it was really cool to find milkweed absolutely covered with monarch caterpillars!