Blog #3 - Defne Gumus PDPH
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! Once we collected the traps for the day we would head back to the office and freeze the mosquitos by placing them inside the freezer. The mosquitos die almost immediately. Then, at a suitable time, we would take them out the freezer and empty a mesh onto a tray or sheet of paper. After, we would separate all the non-mosquitoes and dispose of them, leaving just the mosquitos inside the tray. Once separated, we empty the mosquitoes into vials, which then is placed inside a larger bottle. We would keep the piece of paper next to the bottle in order to keep track of it. When all the mesh/collection bags are emptied into the bottles, we could now begin input of data into the computer and writing them an official label. A label would have a USI number on it, which helps the city identify which bottle is being registered into the computer. We always copied a sheet of the USI numbered labels in order to have a copy of the data in our files since the label on the bottle gets shipped and never seen again..
On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, the lab collector would come in order to pick up our shipment containing our labelled bottles. In order to give it to the collector, we would need to pack a cooler. The cooler needed a base layer of dry ice to keep the mosquitoes cool and prevent DNA denaturing in their trip to the lab facility where they are tested for the diseases and identified. On top of the mosquito trap bottles we would put a paper wrap and set the dips that are also sent off in the cooler!
Talking a little about the dip packaging now: Similar to the live mosquitos, when the dips are collected in the bottles, we write the location, date, time, number of dips, and approximate larvae directly on the bottle. Once we are back at the office, we immediately add ethanol to the dip bottles to preserve the larvae in the state they are in and prevent them from hatching into mosquitoes! We add a USI label to them as well that contains some identifying information and input them into the computer program. As stated before, they are then packed in the cooler to be identified by the lab!
We also had many other duties back in the office including charging all the batteries, washing all the used collection chambers and mesh bags, refilling the stink water containers, repairing broken traps and pieces, tidying the space, and my favorite: feeding the cats in the alley <3
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