Blog #2 - Defne Gumus

 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 for potential mosquito breeding sites and treat them when
necessary. We did one big community garden day with the whole mosquito crew. One of the biggest problems we came across was uncovered rain barrels. While rain barrels are useful for collecting water, especially for community gardens, they can also become HUGE grounds for mosquito breeding sites when left uncovered. We would treat the water when appropriate and help distribute rain barrel covers to plot owners so they could keep their barrels protected -- often people cannot identify the mosquito larvae, so we showed them that too! I really enjoyed the community garden days because they gave us a chance to interact directly with the public, the best feeling is being able to help :)

During the internship, we also received our Pesticide Assistant Applicator licenses, which allowed us to work with different pesticide products and perform treatments under supervision. We mainly learned how to apply larvicides, which target mosquitoes while they are still in their larval stage. This was especially useful at community gardens, where we could find standing water and treat it before the mosquitoes developed into adults.

Speaking of standing water, we also spent a lot of time dipping, which is the act of searching for mosquito larvae in standing water. As I said in my previous blog, we needed to have 10 dips per week. Using a small dipper, we would scoop water from places like puddles, tires, rain-gardens, ditches, catch basins, and other areas where mosquitoes could be breeding. Then, we would look into the container and see if we could spot any mosquito larvae. If we did, we used a turkey baster to suck it up and put it in a separate container. We would kill the mosquito larvae later at the office with ethanol and record the information for our surveillance data. Dipping was one of my favorite tasks because it requires you to keep an eye out for locations you would never think to check. One of my co-interns suggested checking the little divot on the top of a big rock at a park that was collecting water and it was so shocking because we found larvae! As we always tell the public when they ask, mosquitoes only need the amount of water in a bottle cap to lay eggs 😊😮

Till next time,

Defne!











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