Entomologist isn't bugged by mosquitoes at work

CHERRY HILL – On an unseasonably swampy October day, Lauren Segreto was in a cool, air-conditioned lab inside the Camden County Environmental Center.

It's a building nestled along Park Drive, where the thick wooded trails and trickling stream can make one forget about the cars rushing past in waves along Route 70, just a few hundred yards away.

But even though she was indoors, Segreto was surrounded by mosquitoes.

Hundreds of them.

And it doesn't bother her one bit. In fact, she loves it.

Of course, it helps that most of them are dead, and the only live ones are actually mosquito larvae squirming and swimming inside plastic specimen bags. On her laptop screen, a Facebook page for the New Jersey Mosquito Control Association shows long, squiggling forms as its cover image, a reminder that even though the calendar says October, the pesky bugs are still breeding and biting.

Segreto, an East Brunswick native who recently relocated to Delran, is Camden County's own board-certified entomologist, one of just 13 people in the state to carry that designation. She's helping the county health department work alongside its parks department to fight disease-carrying bugs, identifying the multi-legged mischief makers who spread West Nile and other viruses.

This year was a record-setting one for West Nile cases, with 31 cases of human infection in the state, noted Camden County Freeholder Carmen Rodriguez, liaison to the county's Department of Health.

"You have to be mindful of what's out there, knowing what species are out there and what diseases they might introduce into the area," said Rodriguez. 

"That's where Lauren comes in. She has the training and expertise to identify these species, from the adult mosquitoes down to the larval phase. It takes training and time to learn that."

Segreto studied environmental policy at Rutgers–New Brunswick and said she's "always been a tree-hugger," but wasn't particularly enamored of insects.

She wasn't sure how to apply her knowledge, but when the opportunity to specialize in entomology appeared, she took it in hopes it would be lead to more career options.

"And then I fell in love with it," she said. "It was just fascinating to me."

The mother of a 7-year-old son, Segreto works in the lab, inspecting and cataloging insects and larvae brought to her by workers in the field, from the parks department, county mosquito commission, master gardeners, even members of the public.

Her tiny space is populated with bugs — bugs mixed with dirt, dust and debris; bugs hanging on pushpins, stuck to Styrofoam slabs; bugs in tiny cardboard boxes that might otherwise hold earrings or bracelets; posters of bugs; bugs in jars and splayed on a sheet of paper, their exact species noted next to them in black pen.

She identifies the species of mosquito to help the Camden County Mosquito Commission get a jump on fighting the flying pests — and their work doesn't end when the temperatures drop, especially when that doesn't happen until mid-October. Some are frozen and sent to the state to be tested for the presence of West Nile virus or other diseases.

"There's really no offseason," said Jack Swaroski, the county's director of environmental affairs. "It's all about water management."

From November through March, commission employees fan out to clear ditches of standing water that might become breeding pools, and clear streams of blockages that allow water to stagnate. 

"We get hundreds of complaints a year," said Swaroski, "but often we find it's a result of people's own habits."

Mosquitoes, Segreto noted, are weak fliers who can't travel much farther than where they're hatched. So if they're flying around in your yard, chances are there's a reason.

"We've had people complain about mosquitoes coming from a stream behind their house, but when we go out there, we'll see a tarp with a bunch of little puddles in it," said Swaroski. "Or flower pots without plants, but with water in them. The challenge is really getting people to take responsibility for their own spaces." 

Mosquitoes can't breed in running water — but it only takes about a teaspoon of standing water for them to lay eggs, Segreto said.

There are more than 3,000 species of mosquito worldwide, she explained, including 63 species in New Jersey. But not all of them bite, and of the species that do, only the females bite, needing the protein in blood to nourish their offspring. Some feed only on frogs or other insects' larvae, not humans or other large animals.

Spraying insecticides is only a partial solution, Segreto said, and not one that should be taken lightly, since it might also impact benign insects like bees. Insecticides only kill adult mosquitoes that come into direct contact with it.

More effective treatments, she said, are natural interventions like eliminating standing water, or stocking lakes and other still bodies of water with fish that will feed on larvae, like sunnies, minnows and gambusia (commonly called mosquitofish). 

Segreto sees education as part of her mission: explaining why mosquitoes aren't all bad, how vital they are to the ecosystem, and how little things — an oscillating fan, vigilance about standing water, awareness of one's surroundings — can go a long way toward keeping the bugs from making a meal of you.

And if that doesn't work, she has other tools at her disposal, like a model of a mosquito's head and proboscis that she shows to schoolchildren to illustrate how they bite.

Or Mara.

Who's Mara?

A stuffed mosquito doll with zippered compartments, each holding a "disease" that can be spread by the pests: West Nile, Zika, malaria, dengue fever.

Segreto squeezed Mara tightly to her cheek.

It was just another mosquito, along with perhaps a few thousand already in her office.

Phaedra Trethan: @CP_Phaedra; 856-486-2417; ptrethan@gannettnj.com

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