July 9th - Buffalo Turbine in Full Swing and lots of Culex tarsalis

 July 9th - Buffalo Turbine in Full Swing and lots of Culex tarsalis

The past few weeks have been really busy here in Albuquerque! Our buffalo turbine mosquito larvicide project has gotten underway and has our whole team working on trapping and collecting our data to monitor if the larvicide method is an effective method of mosquito control in Albuquerque. With 6 different neighborhoods with 8 trapping sites each we find ourselves taking turns driving around Albuquerque. 

My favorite part, but probably the most difficult, of this process has been interacting with residents. In previous weeks I managed to talk to residents while delivering around 200 letters door to door in the trial neighborhoods. This week while trapping and collecting the Buffalo Turbine sites I have gotten to talk with some very chatty folks curious about what I was doing in their neighbor’s front yard with a weird looking trap and a 12V battery. I have been lucky enough to have only had friendly conversations. It seems like they all want to deal with their mosquito problem and welcome a way to address it. It will be interesting to see if this is the case when we begin working with Dr. Kelp at CSU to collect data in Albuquerque about individuals' knowledge and attitudes regarding mosquito control.

Outside of trapping we have seen increasing mosquito volumes in all of our traps such as the ones from our historical surveillance route. This is normal as the mosquito season progresses however it has tested my mosquito identification skills. Morgan and Ella informed me last week that I had managed to identify somewhere around 640 Culex tarsalis mosquitoes from a single trapping site. Thankfully, tarsalis mosquitoes are easy to identify but I do remember this site taking me a while to finish with my mosquito ID. I even have managed to see banded proboscises and legs in my sleep. I'm glad to be building my identification skills for later in the season when this volume of mosquitoes becomes common!