Internship
Mammal and Tick-Borne Disease Intern
Organization
SUNY Potsdam
Environmental Studies and Biology Department - View Research Webpage
44 Pierrepont Ave.
Potsdam, NY 13676
Duties
Tick are carriers of several zoonotic diseases, but we are mostly focused on Lyme Disease, anaplasmosis, tick borne relapsing fever, and babesiosis. Lyme Disease is found to be in Potsdam. Our research focuses on studying the relationship between ticks and small mammals such as deer mice (Peromyscus Maniculatus), chipmunks (Tamias), short-tailed shrews (Blarina Brevicauda) and several more.
The goal of this research is to decipher the relationship of ticks, their spread of zoonotic disease with small mammals surrounding the Potsdam New York area. The main goal is to see if small mammals assist or increase the spread of ticks and their disease. We aimed to study if this disease is the same across rural, urban, and interface regions of Potsdam. Rural areas are woods, very little interference with humans, and lots of vegetation. Interface areas have little interference with humans as well, wooded areas, and vegetation. Lastly, urban areas are in some wooded areas, villages and backyards where interference with humans is high and there is a lot of vegetation.
Summary
This internship was a paid opportunity through the summer term throughout northern New York in Potsdam. We were required to open in the morning typically around 7am and close the traps around in the afternoon around 5pm. A typical day would include opening and closing the traps, which would take about 1–2 hours for both shifts in the morning and afternoon. Other than that, we would clean the equipment after the trapping sessions, set up SD cameras for our bucket and game cameras, and make bait for our traps. This internship has helped me improve in several skills that I will continue to use throughout my academic and non-academic life. However, those skills include communication skills, data collecting, habitat sampling, and outdoor skills.
To set up all the traps at our sites, first we had to dig holes for our buckets to fit into the ground, and then we had a sheet of metal going from the first bucket to the second. Sticks were used to punch into the ground to hold the sheet of metal up. This took a while for some sites because it was very hot our first day of work, especially for me because I’ve never used a shovel. Then, we had our bucket cameras facing down to the ground with holes on the side. The game camera was usually on a tree. All the traps were 20 meters apart from each other. I enjoy working in groups, so this allowed me to grow and adapt to different techniques and skills.
As for photo analysis, one important thing that stood out to me during the process was the time on the cameras. The cameras consisted of military time which was hard for me to understand at first but then as time went by, I understood it a little better and was able to input data from the camera. For the pictures in the camera, we counted the pictures every 30 minutes. We were looking to see how many people or animals encountered the sites. Using Microsoft Excel was most likely the most irritating program to use, but after I continued to practice for the photos, it was straightforward.
As for the second session, I was more excited and felt more comfortable going out into the field knowing what to expect, how to handle certain situations with people unfamiliar with our work, and or how to collect data, re-set the traps, etc. The most important thing that I took away from this internship was group work as I stated earlier and data collecting. Data collecting helped me organize my notes more effectively. This experience and the skills that came along with it will be used throughout my academic life which can help organization skills when studying while increasing my productivity and accuracy. Overall, group work, data collection and analysis, and wildlife has taught me several things that benefit my future goals academically and non-academically.