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 the box. When Steve got here we began to double check the Deer Tick nymphs again, and but these ones in vials. Unlike the ones I am sorting, these vials are not filled with ethanol, but they go in the freezer. We cannot put them in ethanol because it would kill the bacteria the ticks carry. This is what we did the entire day. Today people from the IT department came and fixed all the computers in the building, so now I can go back to working on my GIS project, which is what I did after Steve left until the day was over. I am thoroughly enjoying despite how frustrating ARCGIS can be.

Wednesday: Again in the morning I sat down and did some more GIS work, I was getting stuck often. I did not make any visible progress but I had done some troubleshooting. While I have taken a GIS class, it did not teach me everything I need to know, but enough for me to know how to properly troubleshoot and learn on my own. When Chris came in he asked me for help with the mosquitos, as many traps had come in, and the short-staffed mosquito workers were sort of drowning in work, so that's what I did until about noon. There was a lot of rust I had to shake off, as it has been awhile, but I got into the swing of things and everything went pretty smoothly. After lunch Chris notified me that I was free from mosquitos and could help with ticks, but Steve did not need help either, so I went back to my computer and finished my self-assigned GIS project. Looking for some more work to do I did a little assignment, just making sure that the final Deer Tick nymph counts from the core sites was accurate, via cross-referencing. I then got assigned to a new project, which a previous intern had started by hand, accurately mapping where exactly we collect ticks. I am going to move this onto GIS to be a bit easier but I have not started yet. This is because at the same time I was assigned this, I was also given some finalized data to put into the spreadsheet that has all the data collected from the past few years. A very odds and ends day today, but the new projects I have excite me. 

Thursday: I began working on my new GIS project this morning, which I worked on for about four hours. It took awhile to get everything set up for myself to start drawing out designated areas, but once I got going I did pretty ok. My only problem is that since I am new and I do not have enough experience to highlight all the sites we test at. I have been asking Chris for most of the locations I have not been, but sort of feel bad for asking him for help every 10 minutes. I only hit a real roadblock once I got to mapping the east moriches site where I had some trouble with making a hole in the middle of one of the zones. After lunch I began putting ticks in vials, the Lonestar nymphs had to be recounted and double checked for Longhorn, so it was sort of slow going. I got something that I have not mentioned before but I have really needed, a spray bottle, which helps a ton with moving the ticks around in the petri dish.

Friday: Today was was pretty similar to yesterday. In the morning I did a little work on my new excel project. I sort of completed the base of all of them, but I now have to differentiate between sites for different species, and add more key sites that I've missed. I need to talk to Steve and Chris about this mainly. The one thing different from Thursday was that me and Sammy went to our 3rd longhorn site. There was not as many as there have been in recent weeks, but still a good number especially as we got away from the beach. We also tried a new spot, which is around the block and still on the water, but a little upriver from the original site. We had a lot of success finding ticks there, so it will probably be a site to return to from now on. Overall, the past two weeks we have notices a sharp increase in larvae, which is dangerous, as we cannot see them on ourselves, and annoying, because they're a pain to deal with. When I got back I just worked on doublechecking the Lonestar nymph counts and putting all the ticks in vials.