@PlasticPercep profile picture
Chris Jernigan @PlasticPercep

Assistant Prof., Department of Biology, Wake Forest University | plasticity of perception | neurobiology of vision and face learning in paper wasps |

Joined January 2021
  • Tweets 82
  • Following 355
  • Followers 376
17 Photos and videos
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Chris Jernigan@PlasticPercep
25 Aug 2025
I am recruiting PhD students to join my lab at Wake Forest University Fall 2026. Projects focus on the neuroethology and development of identity processing in paper wasps. Contact me if interested. Deadline to apply is Dec. 15th 2025. Please share! #PhDposition #PhD #wasplove
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I am recruiting PhD students to join my lab at Wake Forest University Fall 2026. Projects focus on the neuroethology and development of identity processing in paper wasps. Contact me if interested. Deadline to apply is Dec. 15th 2025. Please share! #PhDposition #PhD #wasplove
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For more information about the graduate programs at WFU pleas see this link: biology.wfu.edu/graduate/
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For more information about the graduate programs at WFU pleas see this link: biology.wfu.edu/graduate/
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I am recruiting PhD students to join my lab at Wake Forest University Fall 2026. Projects focus on the neuroethology and development of identity processing in paper wasps. Contact me if interested. Deadline to apply is Dec. 15th 2025. Please share! #PhDposition #PhD #wasplove
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Ok… I’ll give this a try… bsky.app/profile/chrisjernig…
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Another amazing display by Emily Jernigan:
Cornell University Insect Collection@InsectsCornell
26 Sep 2024
The beauty of butterflies (and moths) in our collection!
An insect drawer full of colorful Lepidoptera from the Cornell University Insect Collection

ALT An insect drawer full of colorful Lepidoptera from the Cornell University Insect Collection
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Check out this amazing work on the genome of a strange Polistes wasp parasite led by @MariaCastanoGal and @AvispaTica 👇👇
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Chris Jernigan retweeted
Computational Systems Neuroscience@nawrot_group
13 Aug 2024
Strong course program - Advanced Neural Data Analysis & Neuroinformatics School 2024. Check out andani.info/ for more info. 📅 Apply by August 21, 2024 @BernsteinNeuro @crc1451 @PrutYifat @PlasticPercep

iBehave Network@IbehaveNetwork
12 Aug 2024
📢 iBehave's participates in ANDA-NI School Sonja Grün, @MichaelADenker @fz_juelich @nawrot_group @UniCologne @delgrosso_nick @UniBonn & distinguished speakers: Thomas Wachtler @LMU_Muenchen @HansScherberger @DPZ_eu @BrovelliAndrea @uniamu @YuLikeNeuro @CarnegieMellon @Udoernst
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If you are attending #icn2024berlin this week come see my talk about a special group of neurons in the brain of Polistes fuscatus on Thursday at 10:30AM!
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if you are not attending you can still learn about them in this pre-print: biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

Neural correlates of individual facial recognition in a social wasp

Individual recognition is critical for social behavior across species. Whether recognition is mediated by circuits specialized for social information processing has been a matter of debate. Here we...

biorxiv.org
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This was a fun piece to write with @IDsignals about the clonal raider ants and their potential as a system to uncover the intriguing mechanisms of olfactory plasticity! Short dispatch highlighting the amazing work by @DanielKronauer, Taylor Hart, and colleagues! links below!
Michael Sheehan@IDsignals
23 Jul 2024
Check out this dispatch @PlasticPercep and I wrote about the development of olfactory processing in ants from work by @DanielKronauer and Taylor Hart Developmental biology: Wait a bit and then you’ll smell it sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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Original article by Hart et al. sciencedirect.com/science/ar… Short dispatch: sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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Chris Jernigan retweeted
Martin Giurfa@MartinGiurfa
4 Jun 2024
We are hiring two post docs to work on the neural bases of visual cognition in bees under virtual reality conditions! Join our team @Sorbonne_Univ_ and work in the stimulating environment of @IBPS_Paris! See the offer here: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/UM… Apply as soon as possible!
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Chris Jernigan retweeted
Chelsea Cook@PhDBee
28 May 2024
#Postdoc #Job Alert! The Cook Lab is hiring! We are excited to hire a postdoctoral researcher to study the mechanisms of social behavior in a changing environment #academia #academictwitter employment.marquette.edu/pos…

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Chris Jernigan retweeted
Michael Sheehan@IDsignals
22 Apr 2024
New preprint from the lab led by @MatthewZipple examining the role of competition and contingency (ie, luck) in shaping the lives of rewilded lab mice 🐁 🍀 🎲 Takeaway-competition causes genetically identical individuals to go on self-reinforcing life trajectories … 1/n
Matthew Zipple 🇺🇦@MatthewZipple
22 Apr 2024
We all have a sense that our lives are strongly shaped by contingent events outside of our control (‘luck’). But how do we test that hypothesis? In a new pre-print, we do so by replaying the tape of life of genetically identical mice living in the field. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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Thrilled to share a *NEW PRE-PRINT* I’ve been working on for the last few years! @IDsignals, W. Freiwald, and I describe the neural correlates of individual facial recognition in a social wasp, Polistes fuscatus. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/… 1/10
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more replies
We can localize these selective front-facing wasp units, or neurons, to one part of the brain, the lateral protocerebrum. This is near where we had previously predicted these circuits to be located based on neuromorphological data and a social isolation treatment. 3/10
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A link to our previous paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/d…

Age and social experience induced plasticity across brain regions of the paper wasp Polistes...

Abstract. Developmental studies of brain volumes can reveal which portions of neural circuits are sensitive to environmental inputs. In social insects, dif

royalsocietypublishing.org
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We argue these wasp cells are part of an independently evolved (eyes & brain!) facial recognition circuit. This finding suggests that highly selective neurons tuned to axes of variation associated with identity features are necessary for visual recognition in the brain. 8/10
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This work is just the tip of the iceberg as we hope to crack this system open to study the developmental tuning of this circuit, the social brain, object processing in insects, and the evolution of this circuit from closely related species that lack facial recognition. 9/10
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Lastly, I would like to again thank my co-authors and mentors @IDsignals & Winrich Freiwald as well as tons of feedback and support from too many colleagues to list over the years! 10/10
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This last finding suggested that groups of these wasp cells may encode identity of the displayed wasp face. To explore this, we compare the distance of faces in neural PCA firing space to their distance in face space and find these two spaces are significantly correlated. 6/10
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This face space correlation is unique to front-facing wasp selective units found in the lateral protocerebrum. Suggesting that this is a feature unique to the cells we termed wasp cells. 7/10
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