Observation design

Mosquito Monday 🦟

June 20, 2022

I checked in all 5 of my traps and only 1 was successful (homemade trap). I noticed the ones with sugar water had other bugs (dead) rather than mosquito eggs. I also notice that dirty water was less preferred than a cleaner habitat.

I was so shocked to see actual larvae and so many pupas. I’ve never seen mosquito eggs before. Sadly, I didn’t bring my cellphone microscope so I can share an up close photo of a larvae. Next Monday for sure ! ☺️

Mosquito Monday(late MM🥲)

June 29th

I observed my traps Monday just never updated my blog 😅

Lions, Tigers, and Eggs….OH MY!

I was excited I got to use my cellphone microscope. This little guy is from my homemade trap( not surprising). This one was the only successful one… again. My other traps had mishaps tho… some dried out bc I don’t have access to them daily and some were toppled over by a stray dog. Although this week I didn’t get what I expected, it had taught me what I need to do for a better outcome next checkin. I will try to monitor as best as I can the water in each trap to make sure they have as much as I can. I am hoping trap #3 is as successful as trap #4. I say this bc #3 and #4 have the same contents except #3 is a larger surface area and both traps are in busy areas as well. I also found these weird water worms in one of my traps… well I think they are water worms.

Mosquito check in 🦟

Been on vacay away from my traps and was sad to see only one was successful. This time it wasn’t the usual homemade trap one. This time I had about 20 eggs in trap #5. Also my sugar trap is my least successful. I’m guessing mosquitos like only tap natural water and not sweet water(ants on the other hand do 😅) only one trap had an error which was that it dried up. Since I’m not going anywhere this week I am able to check on it and add water when needed. I also added less sugar on my sugar trap. Trap #2 has been giving me other creatures like worms and eggs of other bugs.

PREDICTIONS FOR MONDAY (July 11)

Since from now till Monday is just 4 days, I can not expect there to be larvae but hoping for at least one to be successful since they are in good spots.

Trap 1- no larvae 

Trap 2- maybe a few larvae or not water worms

Trap 3- successful with a few larvae 

Trap 4- successful with lots of larvae

Trap 5- semi- successful possibly with a couple of larvae 

- trap #4 is in a very busy place where people are in and out an office and is the trap that has been most successful. Compared to the others where they aren’t in busy areas. I think mosquitoes prefer busy areas with water available to lay eggs so once the mosquitoes are born, they can have a host to feed on quickly.

Mosquito Monday 🦟 

July 11 

None of my traps had larvae as expected

My hypothesis as to why I haven’t seen much of a success in these traps is because of the rise of temperatures. It gets up to 106 degrees here in Rio Grande. Although mosquitoes are out during hot temps, the heat causes less people to go out less causing there to be less hosts for mosquitoes to feed on.
next and final check in will be on Friday!

Last check in!

The day has come and this was my final check in before submitting my data to basecamp.

Experience

There was a lot of trial and error with this. First off, we started the collection of data after all the rainy days here in Rio were over, so it was nothing but pure heat here. As a result, most of my projects had evaporated even with daily check ins. Secondly, I wasn’t here where my traps were set most of the time (summer time does not = free time). Other than that, I was surprised to manage to collect mosquito data. The most commonly larvae and pupae I’ve collected were anopheles mosquitoes. Which I’ve searched up and there are mosquitoes that carry more commonly malaria! 😬

Last report

Trap #1-3 were failures: some were evaporated and some tipped over.

Trap#4: clean water no bugs no eggs

Trap #5: 7 larvae and identified as an anopheles egg