LOGAN – She admits her first fears were bees and wasps, but now as a Utah State University doctoral student in biology Brenna Decker is on a mission to help Utahns become better acquainted with, and appreciate, these winged creatures.
“Wasps do a lot of bio-control for our agriculture and orchard systems,” Decker explains, “so it helps protect our own food supply as well as preventing the excessive use of pesticide application, which is a lot better for the environment in general.”
She says wasps are good scavengers and predators of other garden pests, including spiders, flies and crickets. And they are pollinators.
“Even though they don’t have branched hairs that hold on to pollen tightly like bees do,” she says, “they can still transfer that pollen onto their head and their body and when they visit flowers for nectar, they will transfer that pollen to facilitate pollination and help our environment sustain itself.”
Drawing on her interests in entomology, art, teaching and museum studies, she has crafted a traveling exhibit — “Wasps of Utah” — which features specimens of the state’s wasps which might be found in local backyards.
Decker says the exhibit also includes, “informational banners that go into more detail about the coloration of these wasps, where to find them, what they do and how they interact with the ecosystem and our human lifestyle.”
The exhibit will make its public debut June 1 at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Brigham City, appearing later at the Stokes Nature Center in Logan Canyon and finally at the Swaner EcoCenter in Park City.