MS Environmental Health student, Heidi Knecht, currently works at the Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. John’s County (AMCDSJC) in St. Augustine, FL for her internship this summer 2017.  Her responsibilities include working in the insectary and helping with hatching, rearing, and blood feeding of the different mosquito species colonies. The species that she works on are Aedes albopictus, Aedes aegypti, and Culex quinquefasciatus. She also goes out into the community once a week to spread awareness of mosquito control methods while also treating infested areas with either a granular type product or using a backpack sprayer to combat the problem.  She helps the other interns and visiting scientists with their projects whenever they need assistance.

The main goals of her internship is for Heidi to get exposure to the different duties that go into maintaining mosquito control in a county, and to conduct an experiment.  The project that she worked on this summer was to determine the mortality rate of male Aedes aegypti with the use an OFF!® Mosquito Lamp® with repellent diffuser. This study is a preliminary study for a bigger study that has the goal of determining if the death of male mosquitoes affects the female mosquito’s behavior, such as host-seeking, blood feeding, fecundity, and fertility.  In her experiments, Heidi used the OFF!® Mosquito Lamp® placed at 1-meter height at the beginning of the test site and burned for 15 min. Five test layers were set up away from the lamp at 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 m, wherein each layer had 1 paper cage hung at a 1.5-m height from the ground and 1-m away from each other. The test layers were placed downwind of the burning candle. Knockdown was recorded 10 minutes post-exposure period, and mortality was recorded 24-hr post-exposure period.  Heidi presented the research findings from her project at the company staff meeting held today at the AMCDSJC Headquarters.