Week 5 (6/24/24)

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 ID'd and counting mosquitos. I am still not great with ID, I have mainly stuck to the Gravid traps which only have a few species, and even then I have trouble separating a few of them and need to ask to make sure I am doing things right. Also when I am finished with ID Sammy checks my bycatch Petri dish to make sure I did not leave mosquitos in it, which is usually mosquito pieces such as just the head or abdomen. On the other hand, I have gotten into a groove with the counting, and I barely make any mistakes now. Even if I do, I know how to remedy them independently. Counting definitely goes slow, but I enjoy the process and filling up the viles. I have tried to insert timelapses of me doing these tasks but Blogger does not like my video files. 

Lastly, my side project with GIS is finally complete, besides a typo I admittedly did not notice until now, in the Adult Tick map (First Map) that I fixed but apparently did not save. What's typically thought for long island, the further east you go the more dangerous and abundant ticks are. The Southampton Adult Ticks data was very surprising to me and my supervisor Scott, being the lowest on Long Island. The town I live in is Huntington, which also goes against the general trend so perhaps the common assumptions most people make aren't as true as we think, or the data collected may not have been a big enough pool for an accurate reading. But if the pool would need to be bigger, I don't know how exactly that would be done logistically. Scott said the general trend from Nymph to adult infection rates of Lyme is doubled as they reach adulthood, which is followed well for most towns except Riverhead, which only increases 8%, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, Shelter island where ticks hosting B. burgdorferi triples.

Adult Map

Nymph Map



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