NEVBD Summer Blog - Abby Golembiewski

  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...

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...

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 th...