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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 earlier in the day for observation. By the time the three reps were complete, it was about 12:15 am. Although it was definitely a long day, it was one of the best days of my internship so far! It was a really cool experience, and everyone I met was extremely kind and had great stories. Below are some pictures!!












Mosquitoes: 

In other exciting news, I was also able to complete our third bioassay this week! The results from this one were not perfect, but we were still able to take things away from it. The larvae that we used were too old, so about half of them did not feed on the larvicide. Looking at the data without the computer program, the data does look as though it will be linear and follow the trends of the other bioassays, but we will look closer next week. We plan on starting another run on Monday since we could receive better results with more larvae! Additionally, I restarted the colony this week. Our colony was gifted to the field trial, so I hatched a new egg paper and moved larvae into the bug dorm. I also created new test solutions to be used for the bioassay next week. Lastly, I learned how to sort gravid trap nets for record! There were a few nets that had been in the freezer for over a week, so we did not send those to the lab, but it was good practice for me to sort and identify, especially because I have mostly worked with larval stages! 


Black Fly: 

I also went to a few small creeks this week to take some black fly samples. The flow of all of these locations was very low since Hunterdon has not received much rain the past few weeks, but we were able to find small numbers of black fly larvae! I took these samples on Thursday, and went through the samples on Friday to sort! 

I also attended the career seminar zoom this week. I found it interesting to see a path that someone could take in order to get into this work, so I thank NEVBD-TEC and Charles Abadam for setting that up!! I am loking forward to starting another bioassay next week as well as looking into the results we have received so far.

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