Summer 2024: NEVBD Blog

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...

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

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...

This week was go go go with collecting ticks in the field. The window for Deer Ticks nymphs is starting to close, and what little there was to begin with is starting to disappear. So this week I went out all five days to various sites including: Our Deer Tick sites in Brookhaven 3 times, our Deer Tick site in Smithtown, and one of the Longhorn sites, which I will designate as Longhorn site 1. I got very good with being able to identify ticks habitats, but I am still working on noticing the Deer Tick nymphs in the field. I have gotten very good at doing tick ID in the lab, and I am able to go much faster and get it done in a timely manner. I have finished my first project on excel for now, I would like to use GIS but the IT department has not responded to me. I have started another small project where I am calculating how many mosquito samples per square miles we are able to do, compared to other counties, and comparing that to their populations. The last minor thing I did this week was...

 I realized my species IDs may be confusing: Deer Ticks (Blacklegged Ticks): Ixodes Scapularis (I.s.): These are the most important to find for this time of year, as the targets change with the seasons. They are incredibly difficult to find amongst the Lone Stars. Lone Star Ticks: Amblyomma americanum (A.a.): This time of year these are everywhere. We need these for surveillance as well but we do not struggle to collect these, which is why we count the Deer Ticks. Asian Longhorn: Haemaphysalis longicornis (H. Long): These are new and invasive to LI, preferring dryer grasses (like by the beach). They look exactly like Lone Starts except for one minor difference. We have multiple surveillance sites for these ticks that we have to visit often to study their life cycles. American Dog Ticks: Dermacentor variabilis (D.v.) These ticks are massive and tend to stick to 1-2 hosts throughout their lives, so we do not find them as often. The male is my favorite tick for its cool patterns on it...

This week was majority spent in the field collecting ticks. I have gotten much better at identifying tick species on the flags, and in particular spotting the Deer Tick Nymphs, which are what we aim to collect. It was nice being able to see parts of Long Island I have not been to before, and being outside in general for most of the day. In the lab I have gotten much quicker at using the tweezers and microscope to sort the ticks by ID, and almost all the time I did not spend in the field this week was identifying the ticks we have collected, since we are sort of backed up right now. I have not done much with the mosquitos this week, only working on IDing those for a few minutes on Wednesday. My side project of making some Lyme Disease data presentable got feedback on monday, and so I have been chipping away at it slowly each morning, before most people are at work. I find excel to be sort of like a puzzle, so I find it fun and it helps wake me up a little. I hope to have this revised ve...