Words
I usually spend a lot of time writing this blog every day before bed but I’ve been sick and my creativeness/desire to write is lacking. Eric I apologize if this blog sucks but I’m not feeling good enough to write something witty or of good quality.
Bromeliads and Mosquitoes
This week I didn’t spend much time on activities because I spent most of my time at Las Cruces doing research. On Monday, Piper and I went out into the field and set out our six bowls for the collection or rainwater and flagged the three bromeliads per site we were interested in collecting rain water in. We chose five different sites, with the edge of the forest being our control and the minimum and maximum ranges being our disturbed and undisturbed sites.
The following day, Tuesday, Piper and I set out on a hike ( with Sam because his partner, Will, has a sprained ankle). Piper and I stopped at every flagged bromeliad and rainwater collection bowl to collect samples using a pipet. Shoutout to Sam for taking pictures of us at work. Anywho, after collecting all the samples we decided to go back and play with the microscope.
At the lab/library I realized identifying species richness was difficult so we took a break since we had already done a lot of work and waited to speak to Dr. Wasserman.
Eventually, we spoke about changing species richness to mosquito larvae abundance since I could easily identify larvae in the samples.
The following day Piper went into town and I stayed back because I wasn’t feeling too good and I looked and analyzed all 21 samples. I took the chemical samples, pH and looked through the microscope at each individual sample and recorded the number of larvae as well as some phenotypic qualities.
Here were our hypothesis:
- There would be a difference in water quality because of the filtration system of the bromine as
- More mosquitos in better water quality
- More mosquitoes in undisturbed areas
- There would be no difference in water quality due to distance because of the filtration system
We got some interesting results. Rain water and bromikead water did differ. Significantly actually.
Mosquitoes, as expected, were in bromeliads of better water quality.
Oddly enough, disturbed areas had more mosquitoes. We think this is maybe because deforestation is driving mosquitoes out of the forest and into areas with better resources (by humans!)
Nonetheless, the purpose of this experiment was to be able to map the mosquitoes in areas affected and unaffected by mosquitoes so that one day we can prevent the spread of arboviral diseases in a world where climate change is affecting the land in which mosquitoes can inhabit (Sukhralia, 2018).
Eric helped us with statistical analysis because I had forgotten how to run a T-test on excel (Wendy for future reference go to data > data analysis > run T Test of Unequal Variance). Thank you Eric! You’ve been a phenomenal AI and meeting and getting to know you has been a highlight of this trip.
Friday was exhausting!! The entire day was working on presentations (yes we only got a day to analyze data and make nice presentations) and it was stressful because the wifi was out of wack. Regardless, Piper and I walked to the local bar down the road from Las Cruces to steal their wifi and eat their pasta. The pasta was BOMB! It was much needed after only eating salads all day every day. Also. Why do Costa Ricans use refried beans on nachos instead of whole beans? Interesting.
This project has allowed me to grow my ability to work with other people. I am someone who finds it difficult to trust someone with school work but working with Piper has been really good because it has allowed me to learn how to compromise with tasks. Piper was an excellent partner and I couldn’t have asked for someone better to work with.
Final Words
I’ve always had really bad imposter syndrome in stem and even on this trip sometimes I have felt like I don’t belong. One big take away (apart from the slow pace and at my own pace rant I had last week) I have had is that I belong in whatever I want to belong to. I have this newfound confidence in what I do and the presentation showed it. I usually get anxiety before presentations but somehow the final presentation went perfect. Words just flowed freely from my mouth and I ranted about all I had learned this last month and it was such a beautiful feeling. I worked with mosquitoes under Dr. Manzella in the asure lab, and the mosquitoes were an extension to Dr. Hardy’s lab work and I have been SO interested in it but I am yet to confront Dr. Hardy about the potential of getting a formal position in his lab because I felt like I didn’t have what it took to be in a formal lab. This trip has made me push myself to my limits but has allowed me to find this confidence I was missing to explore the Hardy lab.
I am thinking this is going to be my last semester TAing for Dr. Manzella and the genome engineering lab so that I expand from my comfort zone and interview for a lab position with Dr. Hardy. Who knows, maybe he can be my mentor for the Panama trip. Hint hint (-:
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