Skip to main content

Thanks & Summary

I wanted to thank everyone who made this internship possible for me! Thank you to NEVBD-TEC and the staff there including Emilie M Gray and Emily Mader. Thank you to Tadhgh Rainey for hosting me in Flemington! “Dyakuyu” or дякую to Jack Petersen for guiding me through the world of Aedes albopictus, Natular SC, and of course Ukrainian, Polish, etc. I also wanted to thank the rest of Hunterdon County Vector Control, Nick, Marty, and Lexi, for teaching me all about treating the river, gravid traps, light traps, etc! I truly enjoyed all aspects of this internship from lab work on mosquito larvae to black fly field work. I thought that I would give a quick summary of everything I learned this summer! I completed 4 bioassays on Aedes albopictus larvae with different concentrations of Natular SC in 250mL of water. We collected data to create Probit analysis curves using computer software to estimate an LD50 (ours averaged around 0.5 to 0.7 microliters/Liter). We then started taking these estimates outside to treat larger amounts of larval habitat (about 5L). I also gained knowledge on mosquito identification in larval form as well as adult form through microscope work. I created permanent microscope slides using mosquito larvae from our different trials to use as voucher specimens. I also experienced the daily life of mosquito and vector control including setting and collecting gravid traps with stink water, collecting light traps, and treating the river for black fly. I also was able to go to smaller creeks and streams throughout Hunterdon County to collect black fly samples throughout the county. I appreciate all of these experiences because I feel I was able to apply concepts from the classroom and have a better understanding of science applications in the real world. I will be returning to Villanova University at the end of this week to continue my undergraduate degree in Biochemistry, but I will now be able to take everything I learned throughout these ten weeks with me!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
1 comment
Read more

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, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 th...
Post a Comment
Read more