Brenna Decker

Brenna has worked in the field of entomology since attending Lawrence University (Appleton, WI), where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in studio art in 2014. She volunteered at the Field Museum in Chicago after graduation, and continued involvement in entomology by working with state departments of natural resources, public universities, and pest control agencies as a field technician and supervisor.

Brenna earned her Master’s degree in 2017 in entomology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she studied the effects of prescribed burns on bee communities and emphasized the importance of insect collections to track distributional changes in the Illinois bee species. Because of her interest in collection management and systematics, she joined the Pitts lab at USU as a technician in 2018, and in 2019 she started her Ph.D program. Brenna is interested in behavioral evolution, using spider wasps (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae) as the model. Currently Brenna is revising the global genus Minagenia and adding molecular sequences of many species to the overall phylogeny of the spider wasp family. At the end of the program, Brenna plans to design and implement a public exhibition on wasp behavior as part of her museum studies certificate (Check it out here)

While not in the lab or looking at insects under the microscope, Brenna keeps busy with nature photography and playing percussion.