Welcome to the Johnson Lab


News Update: “Not always best being biggest fish in the stream, BYU study finds.”

Research in my lab focuses on understanding evolutionary diversification in the wild. I want to know how biological diversity arises in response to varying ecological conditions, and I am very interested in what this can tell us about patterns of life on earth today. Our lab uses a nice mix of field and laboratory approaches, and we frequently blend perspectives from different academic disciplines. Several of our current projects combine problems in population biology and behavioral ecology with historical perspectives offered by phylogeography and molecular systematics. This integrative approach allows us to work comfortably at the interface of ecology and evolution.




Our work also takes us to some pretty great places, mostly focusing on New World freshwater fishes. We currently have projects in Central America and Mexico, in Patagonia (southern Chile and Argentina), and in the North American Great Basin. Our lab is driven by basic research questions. However, several of our projects have specific conservation implications (e.g. protecting rare desert fishes in the U.S. and Mexico, delineating conservation regions in Patagonia, etc.). Not surprisingly, we are actively involved with government agencies and NGO’s whose goals are to preserve rare species and to protect critical habitats. Basic or applied, what binds our projects together is that they each promise to provide new understanding into the remarkable diversity of life on earth that we see today. I invite you to look around on our web page to learn more about what we are doing, and to explore opportunities to get involved with this exciting work. Jerald B. Johnson Associate Professor of Biology Assistant Curator of Fishes