Rockies and High Plains Vector-borne Diseases Center Summer Internship

 Hi everyone! I just got access to post so this will be a bit of a longer introduction and update on the past weeks' adventures.  I am currently an undergraduate at Oregon State University studying public health with a minor in statistics and a certificate in GIS. I was originally connected to Colorado State University and RaHP Vec last summer when I supported field work a PhD student in the Center for Vector-Borne Infectious Disease (CVID) was completing. This summer I am working at Teton County Weed & Pest, focusing on tick and mosquito surveillance and lab work.  So far I have had the opportunity to complete tick survey's in the area and I must say there is no better feeling then returning from field work with a jar of ticks.  Part of my time at TCWP will be working on using R Shiny to build a tick surveillance dashboard for the county. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to make the data accessible to the public and hopefully help educate on common tick mi...

 Hello again! Today I'll be giving a short overview on Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement district's (SLCMAD) mosquito surveillance activities. Alina already posted about trapping and counting, so I'll be providing some extra pictures and explanations of how traps get processed once the lab staff return from the field! I continue to forget to take pictures of the actual traps, so check out Alina's post for cool fieldwork photos.  On Mondays and Wednesdays, technicians from SLCMAD's lab team set 40+ traps to capture egg laying and host seeking female mosquitoes. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, these traps are collected. Each trap contains a plastic bin connected to a net that all the mosquitoes get funneled into (see below). These bins get placed in a freezer to kill the mosquitoes.  After the bins are frozen, technicians spread the trap's contents out in a large bin and take a large photo. Then, the total number of mosquitoes per trap are counting using the prog...

 Hello again, everyone! It's been a while since I last updated. There hasn't been anything too exciting; we continue our regular routine of trap setting, collection, and mosquito identification. To prevent more individuals from messing with our traps, we have decided to add laminated cards and stickers to inform the public that our traps are used by the Department of Environmental Health. Unfortunately, our traps are still being messed with occasionally, especially on the East Side. On a more positive note, we have successfully started uploading our mosquito abundance data to VectorSurv, which will help inform the public about mosquitoes in our region. We hope to upload our WNV results from our mosquito pools to the VectorSurv database by next week. Finally, I thought I would share this photo I took of one of the plates I was examining for mosquito identification. This was from one of our Gravid traps, and as you can see, what I was looking at is what I like to call a mosquito ...

I recently began graduate school with the Saarman lab at USU. Working with SLCMAD this summer has provided me with invaluable background knowledge in mosquito biology and mosquito control methods. I've done a woeful job taking pictures of the day-to-day operational activities I've participated in, so first I'll describe the research project I'm working on this summer.  L. sphaericus bacteria produce a toxin that is highly effective against Culex genus mosquitoes, the main vector of West Nile Virus in North America, with very little impact on non-target species. However, SLCMAD has had to stop using this product because the local C. pipiens population developed resistance several years ago. I am attempting to collect Culex pipiens larvae that are resistant to a bacterial larvicide, Lysinibacillus sphaericus , for future genomic analysis. I am setting out pans of "stinky water" to lure female C. pipiens to lay eggs. Then, I hatch these eggs in the lab and expose...

 Two weeks ago at SLCMAD, I learned how to collect their CO2 traps. I did a route called "inland sea." This route has 15 locations and combines rural and urban areas. This is what the traps look like: They also have a box that contains the CO2 tank and battery: This is me dismantling a trap: After collecting their traps, they count their mosquitoes and ID them, so I had the chance to get some practice with  mosquito IDing: It was good to get some surveillance experience. I had fun doing the route, and even though IDing is hard for me, it was interesting.  

Hello everyone! My name is Alina, and I'm a senior at USU majoring in biochemistry. I have been working in Saarmaan's lab at USU for 2 years, primarily on insectary maintenance and some genetic testing.  Now that I'm a RaHP VEC intern, I'm going to the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District (SLCMAD) once a week to learn what they do, including surveillance field work. However, the main thing I'm working on with SLCMAD is attempting to develop a new diagnostic tool for Lysinibacillus sphaericus ( Lsph) resistance in  Culex Pipiens. ⍺-glucosidase is an important receptor in Lsph toxicity. Our hypothesis is that resistant Culex Pipiens have a lower ⍺-glucosidase activity than susceptible. We are using 4th instar larval samples and an ⍺-glucosidase activity assay kit to test this. So far, I have conducted 2 bioassays. I want to share in this post  what the bioassays look like: We grind the larva in PBS.  We prepare a master mix using the kit's reagents. We add ...

       The past two weeks, I have been working to help finish up the PCRs for the kdr mutations in Aedes aegypti from a thermal project that is being done in the Saavedra Lab, and with this project's work being wrapped up, my focus has switched over to the RaHP surveillance project.  This has meant a lot more mosquito identification work, which is more difficult now that there is not primarily Aedes Vexans in our overnight CO2 traps. We are finally starting to get a good amount of Culex Tarsalis in our traps, which is the primary focus of our surveillance, although we are also conducting bottle bioassays on Culex Pipiens simply because of the number of individuals we have been able to trap.     We have had mixed results from traps and sometimes will have up to 90% of the individuals in the trap being Tarsalis, and other times only a few individuals in the trap being Tarsalis, which has made conducting consistent bioassay trials with sufficient replicat...