Posts

Week 12

 Monday: Today I did a few things I wanted to try before my last day. In the morning I tried getting into GIS to fix some things in the tutorial I made, but it turns out that I lost my access to it, so I had to add things by memory, and without pictures. When Molly and Steve got in we went to both of the Longhorn sites one last time before my last day tomorrow, and collected a decent number. When we got back I ate lunch than began working on sorting the ticks from said sites until Mike called me over and I got to test a dead crow for West Nile Virus, which is done by swabbing mucus from the throat of the bird and putting it in a machine. I then returned to sorting ticks until I again stopped to go out and I learned how to set up the mosquito traps. When I got back I continued to work on the ticks until it was time to leave. Tuesday: Today is my last day at the lab! I started in the morning by sorting the ticks from yesterday into petri dishes and counting them. In the middle of this I
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 11 (8/5/24)

 Monday: I started the morning with going back to entering data into the excel spreadsheet. I was also able to finally fix the mistake in the equations that has been bugging me for the past week. After a little while me and the other Michael went to two sites, Longhorn site 2 and our Deer tick site in Babylon. It poured over the weekend, so they're weren't many ticks in general but it was nice not dealing with millions of larvae on our flags after one or two clicks. The other site regularly does not have any ticks because there are no deer, and not many rodents, so this was quite literally a walk in the park (I'm sorry). When we got back I went right back to entering the data in excel and fixing the mistakes the last intern had made. I also organized the bags we put our vials in at the end of sampling at a site. These bags have all the weather and distance info written on them, and they are kept for for a little while. The last intern had messed up transferring data in some
1 comment
Read more

Week 10 (7/29/24)

 Monday: It was absolutely pouring rain all day today, so me and Steve did no field visits. From getting into work to lunch I was working on the GIS project, mapping out the sites for future tick flaggers, and I also made a tutorial on Power point for my boss and the new hire Entomologist that starts next week, so they are able to add on or make changes need be. I had a lot of software set backs, as I accidentally clicked something and it deleted the whole project and grayed out all the buttons, this took a little while to fix and catch back up to where I was. After lunch me and Steve spent the whole day grinding away at putting all the ticks in vials. There was maybe 3/4 left to go and now we are down to only 2 sites to complete. We also had the Lab tech Mike do some more tick sorting today with ticks from Longhorn site 2 from last week. Tuesday: This morning I did a little more work on the GIS project, and had Chris sit down with me to make sure I was marking the right areas. There a
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 9 (7/22/24)

Monday: My computer still does not work, and probably will not for awhile, so my GIS projects are on hold until further notice unfortunately. However my new task of organizing ticks in the ethanol vials has been ok. My supervisor Scott wanted me to go through to look for one specific rare tick, but also continue the organization it had been going through before I had started my internship. So I spent the morning doing that, and checking one last place for this tick (I am not allowed to say the species because the information was never released). After, me and Steve went back Longhorn sites 1 and 2. The pattern we saw last week in tick populations was ever so present this week as well, but a little less overall at both sites. When we got back I ate my food then sorted the ticks we caught today. Tuesday: In the morning a did some more work trying to continue sorting the ticks in the vials. I made sure they were sorted and I started a new excel sheet with their coordinated in the grid in
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 8 (7/15/24)

Image
 This was my last planned shortened week of the internship, so this entry starts on Wednesday (7/17/24) Wednesday: Today I started with starting a new GIS project I gave myself, where I am making a heat map to show how close areas of the county are relative to the actual sampling sites. This was inspired by my own experience, because the site for my town is 20 minutes from my house, and I do not even live in the biggest town. This is a map I unfortunately cannot release on here. After spending about an hour trying to do this me and Steve had to get out and hit the weekly surveillance sites because it is supposed to rain overnight and possibly into the day Thursday. We got to Longhorn site 1 and Lonestar site 1. Each site was on the opposite ends of the extremes in terms of the quantity of ticks we found at each site. At Longhorn site 1, we each easily got over 100 ticks each in under 20 samples. We left this site pretty quickly and after sampling at Lonestar site 1, we collected maybe
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 7 (7/8/24)

Image
I have decided to shake up the way I do my blogs from now on, I always write paragraphs at the end of each day to go back to when  I write about my week on Friday. However I realized I could make these posts more in depth if I just use the paragraphs. Monday : We did not go out in the field today, me and Steve stayed in and we began counting the rest of the other species of ticks we have collected from the Deer Tick sights, as we only counted the Deer Tick Nymphs at each site to save time earlier in the internship. We got maybe 2/3rds of the way through before lunch. After, Chris had me teach the new hire, also named Michael, how to properly ID the ticks and the process of sorting and labeling the petri dishes. We started by going through sample from one of the Longhorn tick sites together, and I checked over his work as we went. After, me and Michael picked up where me and Steve were before lunch, and I showed him the process we go through for counting ticks. This is what we did for t
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 6 (7/1/24)

This week is a short week for fourth of July, and I am taking a personal day off on the 5th, so not to much happened. On Monday we went to our sites in East Hampton to finish the samples off before the Deer Tick nymph season slows down to much. We got the ticks we needed, just in time for it to pour for the whole ride home. There was a bunch of traffic so that is all we did on Monday. I got back, did a few odd chores around the lab such as folding the ticking flags before the day ended. Tuesday was entirely opposite from Monday, and I was in the whole day sorting and counting mosquitos. I have the gravid traps down to a science, but I keep messing up the backend with entering data into the computers and today a sample may have gone missing but we do not know, and could've been a zero. From now on if I get any empty traps I am going to mark them as such in my notebook just to be sure. Lastly Wednesday Me, Steve, and the new lab tech hire, another Michael, went to the site in Longhor
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 5 (6/24/24)

Image
We are coming super close to being done with our first round of collecting Deer Ticks. On Monday me and Steve and Jules went to our sites in Riverhead and Southold one last time, putting the totals for both sites well over 100. The next day me and Steve went to a site in Brookhaven which we needed 8 more to get our total, and we struggled to find them over the course of an hour. The last sites we need to go to now are in the Hamptons, which will be a long drive next week. There is another site we sometimes go to but it has such a small amount of ticks that it is hardly worth going to try with all the other sites that also need collecting, and have more potential. After these are completed, I believe we just have to do the scheduled site visits that monitor Lonestar or Longhorn populations at Longhorn sites 1 and 2, and Lonestar Site 1 Unfortunately, we were down two interns this week that worked on Mosquitos, so I had to step in and once again, besides site visits, this week I mostly I
Post a Comment
Read more

The Stars of the Show

Image
There are the pictures of the most common ticks I see. Visit this site to learn more about ticks. Notice: Long Horn Ticks have stubbier Palps + Hypostome
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 4 (6/17/24)

Image
This week has been a very Mosquito-heavy week due to a combination of many mosquito-focused interns were out most of the week and we had a short week with the federal holiday for Juneteenth. I was able to get a little more involved in the process for the mosquitos, and did a new, but simple task for of recharging all the batteries for the light traps. I was also able to get familiarized with the mosquito ID and counting process and realized I may not be as good at them as I thought, and I definitely still need the dichotomous key for the Mosquito ID outside a few species. Even after I ID species from a trap, my coworker Sammy checks to make sure I am correct. Admittedly, it was a nice break from the norm with going out flagging for ticks, being able to be in an air conditioned room during an especially hot week, but I am always excited for doing work outdoors with the tick flagging. On that note for ticking, we only went to two sites this week, and they were far.  Huntington, and  on S
Post a Comment
Read more