Week 5: A Holiday Week and the NEVBD Seminar

 This week, we had Wednesday off for Juneteenth. Since I work for the state of Massachusetts, I get almost every federal holiday off. This did change up our routes for the week, as it is crucial to reach all of our towns, especially now when perturbans mosquitos are approaching their peak. I also had the chance to meet many of the other NEVBD interns over zoom this week! It was a busy week (which is why this post is somewhat late) with a rather unusual schedule

Reaching all of the Towns in Four Days

Perturbans mosquitos I counted from a 
trap from Westborough, MA. The final
count was in the 4000s.

I usually trap along the Northern Route, which is a total of fourteen towns. This usually means I set 3 or 4 traps, and collect 3 or 4 in one day. This means the lab has a steady, but manageable amount of mosquitos coming in. However, this week, I set 7 traps on one day, and picked up all 7 on the following day. Not only did this mean that it took longer for me to set up the truck and process the mosquitos, it also meant the lab was nearly overwhelmed with the sheer volume of mosquitos we were bringing in. This meant that there were many days where I stepped in to help with ID. I have gotten much faster and better at identifying mosquitos, although I will admit the learning curve has been steep. 

Meeting other Interns!

On Friday, Aoife and I attended the general NEVBD seminar together. We had the chance to meet many interns at various sites across the Northeast, and it was interesting to hear the range of projects that people are working on. Some of the interns seemed to have a similar project to us, while others were working with ticks or were doing the PCR testing for viruses. It really seemed to capture a good range of vector control. The interns themselves also came from a wide variety of backgrounds. It seemed like no two interns came from the same university, with a wide variety of majors. There was also a good mix of undergraduate and graduate students. I was glad to have had the chance to meet them briefly, even just over zoom.