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Week 8! UM Long-Term Surveillance, 1st Instar Larvae, and Mammal Trapping

 Week 8 has now come to a close and I am excited to share some new information with you all. This week there was 3 main tasks; completion of the UMaine long-term surveillance transects in Wells, my first solo experience setting gravid traps for the Pesticide Resistance project, and aiding as a scribe for a small mammal trapping project.  University of Maine Long-Term Surveillance To start this post off, there was lots of work to complete for the UMaine project. Before I can begin to sample the area, it is helpful to use flagging tape to mark out the transects that I will be dragging in. There is 10 transects that consist of 100 meters where every 10 meters the flag must be checked for ticks. To streamline this process, each 10 meters was marked and labeled so that anyone could perform this surveillance in an effective fashion. The time-consuming aspect of doing this, was that the previous start and end markers I placed were not universally 100 meters. Members of the UMaine coo...
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Week 9! West Nile Virus

  On Monday, I heard the news that would shape the rest of my week, West Nile Virus (WNV) found among 6 dead birds. Similar to how I mentioned in previous posts that the Jamestown Canyon Virus (JCV) positive may have been the earliest positive (of year) in Maine history, these WNV positives, reported by the Maine CDC, are the earliest to have been found in birds. These birds were found in 5 different towns across the state and has added a spark to identification efforts this week. The Maine CDC additionally released that a human case is being investigated, but WNV was not likely to have been contracted in Maine as this person had been traveling. Additionally I was tasked with completing a literature review of recent publications for my own education and to add to the labs accessible papers to read.   West Nile Virus WNV is an RNA virus that resides in the Flavivirus genus. An infection may develop into West Nile Fever that in most extreme cases can affect the central nervous s...
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Week 6! A trip to the Maine CDC

This week had a lot of different activities. To start the week I spent a majority of my time working on mosquito identification. There is a large number of unidentified mosquitos in the labs freezer that have either been collected from resting boxes or CDC light/CO 2   traps. Since I am still fairly new at this, I was instructed to help out with the resting box samples as the number of mosquitos collected is generally lower. This is a more effective way to learn since I do not become overwhelmed, and my work can be more accurately double checked by research assistants. Of the mosquitos identified, we have begun to separate the inventory according to where the specimen will be transported to for testing. From July to August or until the first mosquito positive for EEE/WNV,   Culiseta melanura, Cs. morsitans, Culex pipiens, and Cx. restuans , will be sent to the Maine Health and Environmental Testing Laboratory (HETL). The JCV testing will now be directed to the Federal CDC, but...
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