NEVBD Summer Blog - Abby Golembiewski

Posts

Week 10: (8/12-8/16)

This summer truly flew by as it is somehow already the last week of my internship! As I mentioned in my last post, while I was gone, some trials were run on the buckets that we had set up right before I left. Most of the buckets were naturally colonized like we had hoped, but a few needed an egg paper. During this last week, we ran a final trial on the last three remaining buckets with concentrations of 0.3mL, 0.4mL, and 0.5mL as well as a control. After 24 hours, we took note of some live larvae in the two smaller concentrations but no live larvae in 0.5mL. This week I also got to see different types of larvae because they were being shipped to Florida. One larvae I saw was Psorophora ciliata, which was very interesting because they eat other mosquito larvae. I actually got to see an actively feeding larva with another mosquito in its mouth. Then, later in the week, I saw an adult, and it was so large compared to the Aedes albopictus that I had been working with throughout the entir

Week 8 & 9: (7/22-8/2)

I decided to combine my week eight and nine blog posts because week nine got cut a little short due to my trip to Alaska! These two weeks involved a lot of prep work for outdoor studies using Natular SC. We filled 15 white buckets that hold about 7-8 Liters of water because we wanted mosquitoes to naturally colonize the buckets that we would later treat. We placed each of the 15 buckets in different locations on the campus. Throughout this time, we also treated some abandoned guardrails that we found on the campus with different concentrations of Natular SC. The mosquito larvae that we found in the guardrails was mostly Aedes japonicus. The goal of the guardrails as well as the buckets is to create a separate probit analysis for outdoor studies. At first the concentrations we used were 1mL, 0.8mL, 0.6mL, 0.4mL, 0.2mL, and a control. However, after the first trial we realized that there was less volume in the guardrails than we thought, so the concentrations were more like 1mL, 1.5mL,

Week 7: (7/15-7/19)

Bioassay number four was completed this week! On Monday, we set up for this bioassay, and 72 hours later on Friday we were able to record the results. The larvae for this bioassay were hatched from egg papers the Friday the previous week, and yet we still noticed some pupae in the experiment. Besides that, everything went as planned, and the results are mostly in line with what has occurred so far with the other runs. I also made more voucher slides from this bioassay, which were all Aedes albopictus. Then, we happened to find an abandoned gravid trap that had mosquito larvae in the water naturally. We measured the water to 5L and then treated it with 5mL of Natular SC like in the mesocosm studies we did previously. By the next day, all of the larvae were dead! Then, we took the dead organisms and looked at them under the microscope. There were Anopheles, Aedes japonicus, and some Cluex. This was my first time looking at anything other than Aedes mosquitoes under the microscope, so

Week 6: (7/8-7/12)

This past week was very busy but very exciting! I was able to attend a field trial on Tuesday of this week in Mercer County for a new product from Valent BioSciences. This experience was awesome, and I learned a lot! When I first got there, I helped to make 200 post treatment cups to put mosquitoes from different reps of the trial in. Then, I aspirated mosquitoes for the first time! We separated mosquitoes (albopictus, pipiens, and field collected mosquitoes) from different counties into “tambourines” for three different distances from the sprayers and three different trials. There were also tambourines that acted as controls for the trial. At first, aspirating mosquitoes was a little difficult for me, but then I got the hang of it. Then, we waited for the weather. At 9:30, the trial was ready to start since the ground temperature was cooler than higher in the air. After each rep, I helped to aspirate the mosquitoes from the tambourines into the post treatment cups that we created earl

Week 5: (7/1-7/5)

Happy July! Although this week was short with the holiday weekend, I was still able to get a lot done as well as create a game plan for the coming weeks! Mosquitoes: The results of last week's mesocosm study in a 5 L container was that the pupae lived but the larvae died. This was expected as fourth instars and pupae do not feed and therefore would not be impacted by the larvicide. I also started another mesocosm study this time with 2 5L buckets. The treatment was 1 microliter per liter. The larvae in each bucket were taken from the two different colonies that we have which is important for what we learned later in the week. This week I was able to do a lot of microscope work, which was really interesting for me. I looked at both live and dead larvae. I also learned the process of making permanent microscope slides which involved heat shocking the live larvae, then placing them in 80% ethanol to kill them, and lastly, 100% ethanol to dehydrate them. I learned the key identific

Week 4: (6/24-6/28)

Black Fly: This week, I did not do too much black fly work, but I was able to go to two small creeks to take samples from. However, at one of those sites we were unable to find any black fly (which is technically a good thing!). The other site was successful, so we added one more sample to the small creek collection. Below is a picture!! A lot of these black fly small creek spots are so pretty! Mosquitoes: On the bioassay side of things this week, I first collected the 96 hour data from last Thursday. There were some interesting results, and when the Probit analysis was run, it said that our LD50 was 0.08 microliters/Liter. This is similar to the results we received last time (0.05 microliters/Liter). We then decided to start our first outdoor trial and scaled up to a “mesocosm” (5 L of larval water rather than 250 mL). We put 5 mL of 1 microliter/Liter solution into it. I took note that most of the larvae were dead within the first 24 hours, and they were all dead after 72 hours