Aoife's NEVBD Internship Blog

  Mosquito ID I'm continuing to practice my ID skills. They've improved a lot over the past two weeks! I can confidently identify a  perturbans  now, after counting about 5,000 of them! We are mostly catching perturbans in our CDCs and Culex  in our gravid traps. We are also finding japonicus and other Aedes.   I will continue to practice using the ID guide and learning what mosquitoes commonly found in this area look like.  Connecting ID to Trapping  I've started to find connections between the trap site and the mosquito samples collected. Perturbans  are commonly found in swampy areas, and I've noticed that my trap sites in really swampy towns collect a lot of perturbans, especially if my CDC is hanging close to a marsh. These swampy towns are also probably most likely to be exposed to EEE as a result.  Marsh site in Sturbridge. Public Education When I'm out trapping, people walking by will sometimes ask me about what I'm doing. I...

 Meeting NEVBD Interns! Friday I met many of the other NEVBD interns over zoom. I really enjoyed meeting everyone and hearing about their projects. It was interesting to hear about what the other interns are doing on a day-to-day basis, and I found that many of us do similar things like mosquito trapping and ID. I found it very helpful to hear the tricks they learned that helped them have an easier time IDing mosquitoes and I found myself using a lot of the techniques they mentioned these past two weeks as I worked in the lab. It's great to be able to connect and learn from each other. Mosquito Trapping  We changed our trapping schedule this week to make sure that we hit every town with four-day work week. I set up eight traps on Monday, collected them Tuesday, then set up eight on Thursday and collected them Friday. We have been collecting a lot more mosquitoes than last year (in the couple of weeks we've been trapping, we've already surpassed the total number of mosquitoe...

 Mosquito ID This week, I learned how to ID mosquitoes. I looked at mosquitoes in a microscope and followed an ID guide to categorize them. We count the number of the specific types of mosquitoes we caught at each different trap site and then send the species that are capable of transmitting specific diseases to the lab for testing. Mosquito ID is very tedious, but I like to learn about the sample that I caught.  I am continuing to set up CDC and gravid traps every day. Each morning, I pack up my truck with everything I need to set up traps and collect the samples. I return to the office after I set up and pick up the traps and process my mosquitoes. Now, I am working on learning how to ID the mosquitoes. Right now, I'm very slow and need someone to double check most of my IDs, but I hope I will get better with more practice.  

Gravid Traps This week we learned how to set gravid traps. These traps have a collection cup positioned above a plastic basin filled with something we call "Mosquito Soup"—a mix of hay and water that’s been sitting outside for a few days (and yeah, it smells exactly as bad as you’d expect)! Female mosquitoes are attracted to the soup to lay their eggs. Then, a fan creates negative suction, pulling the mosquitoes up into the collection cup. We often find mosquitoes carrying diseases in these traps because they usually come from ones that have already had a blood meal. Since mosquitoes pick up diseases from the mammals they bite for blood, those in the trap are more likely to be infected. Gravid trap set up in Sturbridge. Watch out: perturbans on the rise This week, we caught a lot of C oquillettidia perturbans . For context, compared to this time last year, we caught 900% more perturbans . Perturbans  transmit EEE, and because we are catching so many of them,   we expect it to...

 My day to save for the summer: CDC Traps For the past two weeks, my main job has been setting up and taking down CDC traps. These traps look a little bit like miniature flying saucers, but instead of aliens coming down from them, mosquitoes are going into  them! CMMCP mainly uses CO2 CDC traps, which release carbon dioxide from a tank we connect to the top of the trap. Mosquito antennae detect carbon dioxide, and this ability is used by the mosquitos to find sources of blood, so they are attracted to the CO2 emitted by our traps. Some CDC traps use light to attract the mosquitos, but we use the CO2 traps to reduce the number of junk bugs (the bugs that get caught in the trap that aren't mosquitos). Once a mosquito flies close to the trap, a fan pushes them down into a collection cup where they cannot escape. The next day, I return to the trap to collect the sample and disassemble the trap.  My truck, packed and ready to set up CDC CO2 traps.   CDC CO2 trap Once I ge...