Evan C. Johnson joined the Lewis Research Group in November 2022 to study the dynamics of Mountain Pine Beetles. He is interested in how the unique life-history of the Mountain Pine Beetle relates to patterns at the landscape level, including population synchrony and the influence of climatic factors. More generally, Evan is interested in community ecology and continues to work on species abundance distributions, coexistence, population time-series analysis, and flour beetle experiments.
Evan completed his PhD at UC Davis under the supervision of Alan Hastings. His thesis, titled “Coexistence and complex population dynamics” contains a number of improvements to Modern Coexistence Theory, a methodology for measuring the importance of different explanations for coexistence. His thesis also describes novel population dynamics, observed in flour beetle microcosms. Prior to his PhD, Evan received his Bachelor’s degree from Kalamazoo College.
In his free time, Evan enjoys running, hiking, paddle-boarding, making pizza, and eating cookies.