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Week 6

 

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 really enjoy this part of the job because I get to share everything I've learned with them. I like explaining how the traps work and why we are setting them up. I've had a few people come up and thank me for the work that I'm doing, which was really nice and motivating me to do this work. While we haven't found any diseased mosquitoes yet, I still think that public outreach and awareness is vital. It's important that the public is aware of the risk and knows what they can do to prevent disease transmission and also what CMMCP can do to help them. 

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