Brains behind the buzz: SOLS alum uncovers the neural code of social insects

Christopher Jernigan, a PhD graduate from the School of Life Sciences, is redefining our understanding of insect neurobiology one bee, and now one wasp, at a time. With a career that spans rainforests, research institutes, and high-tech labs, Jernigan has carved out a remarkable path that blends behavior, neuroscience and evolutionary biology in social insects.

Before pursuing his PhD, Jernigan was already deep in the field—literally. He spent two years working with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, an experience that would spark both his scientific curiosity and his professional trajectory. While in Panama, he studied visual learning in bees, culminating in research on color learning in Africanized honey bees. This experience led him to ASU, where existing collaborations and research funding supported his early doctoral work.

Jernigan’s first PhD chapter took him back to Panama, where he explored colony defense behavior in stingless bees, known locally as “angelitas.” These tiny bees exhibited unique guarding behaviors that offered a compelling entry point into studying social structures and defense mechanisms in insect societies.

Back at ASU, Jernigan focused on olfactory processing in honey bees which is how bees learn and interpret smells, especially in the context of foraging. In one notable experiment, he raised bees in controlled environments where they only experienced a single floral scent. His findings showed that limited olfactory experience led to less variable, but also less flexible, neural processing among individuals. This work hinted at broader questions of how experience shapes brain function, setting the stage for his next major leap.

After completing his doctorate, Jernigan turned his attention to a new organism: the Northern paper wasp (Polistes fuscatus). This species of wasps are the only known insect capable of individual facial recognition, a trait more commonly associated with humans and other mammals.

Currently working as a postdoc at Cornell University, Jernigan employed cutting-edge silicon probe technology, more commonly used in mammalian studies, to record neural activity in wasps. He wanted to pinpoint how these insects process and recognize individual faces; what brain regions are involved, how experience alters that circuitry and what that might tell us about broader principles of cognition and identity recognition.

His research builds off of the research of Elizabeth Tibbets at the University of Michigan, who conducted the original study confirming that isolated Polistes fuscatus wasps were unable to discriminate among social images. Jernigan's work has identified the specific brain region involved in color and facial processing, finding neural populations that fired selectively in response to different wasp faces, drawing surprising parallels with face-processing regions in primates.

Toward a Deeper Understanding of Experience and Identity

Now, Jernigan is heading to Wake Forest University, where he is expanding his research to explore how developmental and environmental factors shape neural circuits in wasps. He’s examining how varied social experiences influence identity recognition and testing how features like color diversity or facial patterning affect neural representation.

Using wasps as a model system offers unique advantages. Their relatively simple brains allow for precise tracking of neural pathways, something far more difficult to achieve in primates or humans. Jernigan hopes that his work can eventually shed light on universal mechanisms of learning and perception, with implications that extend far beyond the insect world.

What started as a fascination with ants and bees has evolved into a groundbreaking career that merges field biology with sophisticated neurophysiological tools.

“I’ve always been interested in how animals process the world around them,” Jernigan explains. “And it turns out that even tiny insect brains are capable of incredibly sophisticated behavior.”

As he prepares to start his faculty role at Wake Forest this fall with continued NIH funding supporting his trailblazing work, Jernigan stands at the forefront of a burgeoning field. He may be one of the only wasp neuroethologists in the world, but his research is setting a foundation for a whole new way of thinking about brains, behavior and the role of experience in shaping who we are.