Welcome to my Internship Blog!

Hello! My name is Abby Golembiewski, and I am a biochemistry student at Villanova University. This summer I will be interning with the Hunterdon County Mosquito and Vector Control Program in Flemington, New Jersey. I am excited to gain experience in field and laboratory work while studying black flies and Asian tiger mosquitoes!!

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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

Week 1 (6/3-6/7):

During my first week as an intern, I got a taste for both lab and field work!! In the lab, I first learned common types of mosquitoes including the Asian Tiger mosquito or Aedes Albopictus, which we will be working with over the course of the summer. I worked with “Dr. Jack” Petersen a lot this week, and he was incredibly informative on all things mosquitoes! I was very excited to get started, and we set up a new infirmary as well as a sample bioassay on the first day. I already feel more confident in my ability to determine different life stages of the mosquitoes. Additionally, much of the first week was defining the first bioassay we are going to be running with Natular SC, which is a larvicide that would be new to New Jersey. Our research question is how many microliters of Natular SC are needed to treat 100 L of larvae? We hope to answer the question through a regression and probit analysis of the data. We then decided 8 different concentrations to use for 8 different treatments

NEVBD Summer Blog - Abby Golembiewski

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