{"id":3708,"date":"2012-10-05T11:48:18","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T11:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/wp\/2012\/10\/05\/new-mosquito-record-on-newfoundland\/"},"modified":"2019-11-14T21:44:45","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T21:44:45","slug":"new-mosquito-record-on-newfoundland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/2012\/10\/05\/new-mosquito-record-on-newfoundland\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mosquito Record on Newfoundland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Today&rsquo;s post is by Kate Bassett of Memorial University. If you&rsquo;d like more information about her work, she encourages you to <a href=\"mailto:kbassett@nf.sympatico.ca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">contact her<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>Hi,<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m a graduate student at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mun.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Memorial University<\/a> (MUN, St. John\u2019s, Newfoundland and Labrador), nearing the end of my masters\u2026hopefully :). My research project is focused on a wildlife issue. Snowshoe hare, Newfoundland\u2019s only Lagomorph, suffer from infection by California serogroup viruses (snowshoe hare virus and Jamestown Canyon virus). Helped by the province\u2019s Chief Veterinarian Officer Dr. Hugh Whitney, I sampled the blood and tested for infection in wild hares and laboratory rabbits used as sentinels.\u00a0 This work was based in part in the laboratory led by microbiologist Dr. Andrew Lang at MUN, as well as working with the team at the National Microbiology Lab headed by Dr. Michael Drebot in Winnipeg. But, my project also included studying mosquitoes that are thought to transmit these viruses. That part of my project was based in the social insect lab at MUN headed by Dr. Tom Chapman.<\/p>\n<p>I spent two summers catching mosquitoes. Consequently, I can\u2019t miss them. I seem to have permanently altered my hearing and vision such that a mosquito in flight always grabs my attention. Last May while putting in a load of laundry, a specimen alighted on the washer. I dropped everything and ran upstairs for my aspirator, and made it back to collect this girl to identify at work. I froze her and didn\u2019t get around to id\u2019ing until later in the summer, and I was shocked to see that it may be <em>Culex<\/em> <em>pipiens<\/em>. This mosquito gains attention on the East Coast of North America because it can transmit West Nile Virus, and when I made this determination the worst West Nile viral outbreak in N.A. was underway and centered in Texas. I was uncertain of my morphological identification, so I added a leg or two of this specimen to my DNA barcoding work, and I waited for the outcome. When the sequence confirmed by identification, I put out a press release, which had me immediately doing <a href=\"http:\/\/ntv.ca\/?p=6248\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">live interviews on TV<\/a>\u00a0and Radio. I didn\u2019t have a lot of time to think about it, I just went from interview to interview. It was a good experience; I do recommend it. I should add that we don\u2019t have confirmation of West Nile Virus in Newfoundland, but we don\u2019t know what lies ahead. Drs. Lang (<a href=\"mailto:aslang@mun.ca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">aslang@mun.ca<\/a>), Chapman (<a href=\"mailto:tomc@mun.ca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tomc@mun.ca<\/a>) and Whitney (<a href=\"mailto:hughwhitney@gov.nl.ca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">hughwhitney@gov.nl.ca<\/a>) are looking for students to pick up where I am leaving off.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_565\" style=\"width: 570px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/escsecblog.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/10\/cx-pipiens-for-blog.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-565\" class=\"size-full wp-image-565\" title=\"Culex pipiens photo by Kate Bassett\" alt=\"Culex pipiens photo by Kate Bassett\" src=\"http:\/\/escsecblog.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/10\/cx-pipiens-for-blog.jpg\" height=\"836\" width=\"560\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-565\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Here\u2019s a picture of Cx. pipiens I took using a digital camera mounted on a dissecting scope. I used the program <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heliconsoft.com\/heliconfocus.html\">Helicon<\/a> for producing a wide focal plane. It\u2019s not the one that I got in May and fingerprinted, but another one that I got last weekend (September, 2012), also in my house!<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&rsquo;s post is by Kate Bassett of Memorial University. If you&rsquo;d like more information about her work, she encourages you to contact her. &#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;- Hi, I\u2019m a graduate student at Memorial University (MUN, St. John\u2019s, Newfoundland and Labrador), nearing the end of my masters\u2026hopefully :). My research project is focused on a wildlife issue. Snowshoe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[471,473,513,476],"tags":[591,804,770,502,805],"class_list":["post-3708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-fr","category-blog-fr","category-research-fr","category-students-fr","tag-culicidae-fr","tag-kate-bassett-fr","tag-mosquito-fr","tag-student-fr","tag-west-nile-virus-fr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5536,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions\/5536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}