Week 1 (5/28/24)

A lot happened in my first week interning here! I met my supervisors, Chris Romano and Scott Campbell, who showed me around the lab and assigned me a desk. I have begun to help set up for mosquito traps, and IDing Mosquitoes from the traps, and sorting them into vials to be tested for diseases. The amount of mosquitos coming in already for the start of the year has been nearly triple from years before apparently, so I was sort of thrown into it quickly and made a few mistakes, but there is always a learning curve for everything. For the Ticks, my coworker who collects them Steve, had me measure how long 20 paces were for me, so we could get an idea of how far I go when sampling ticks. Wednesday, I went with Steve in the morning to collect ticks in Brookhaven, which is done with a flag that gets dragged along the ground for 20 paces, and then ticks are picked up with tape or tweezers and put into a vial. Steve also showed me the life stages of ticks, being larvae, nymph, and adult, and told me Nymph Dog Ticks are the most important. I also started my side project for free time, where I take the data collected the past 6 years on tick pathogenicity rates across the county and put them on graphs. On Friday, me, Steve, and another intern went tick collecting again, and we were able to collect many more ticks, and I have been getting much better at IDing them

I also finished the first rough draft for my side project, which is making graphs to better depict the rate of B. Burgdorferi infection in Deer Ticks. This is the bacteria that causes Lyme Disease.

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