Assistant Professor
Email: philip.johns@yale-nus.edu.sg
Email: philip.m.johns@gmail.com
Dr Philip Johns earned his BA from Carleton College and his MSc and PhD from the University of Chicago. Before coming to Yale-NUS College, he was a Research Fellow at the University of Maryland, and he taught in various capacities at Villanova University, Swarthmore College, Bard College, and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Dr Johns’ research interests revolve around the evolutionary genetics of social behaviors in insects and other arthropods. His primary research is on sexual selection and selfish genes in stalk-eyed flies. He also studies the evolution of altruism in termites, and courtship behaviour and aggression in spiders and praying mantids.
Reinhardt, JA, CL Brand, KA Paczolt, PM Johns, RH Baker, GS Wilkinson. 2014. Meiotic drive impacts expression and evolution of X-linked genes in stalk-eyed flies. PLoS Genetics 10(5): e1004362. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004362.
Howard, KJ, PM Johns, NL Breisch, BL Thorne. 2013. Frequent colony fusions provide opportunities for helpers to become reproductives in the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 67:1575-1585.
Wilkinson, GS, PM Johns, JD Metheney, RH Baker. 2013. Sex-biased gene expression and development of sexually dimorphic heads in stalk-eyed flies. PLoS ONE 8(3): e59826.
Baker, RH, A Narechania, PM Johns, GS Wilkinson. 2012.
Gene duplication, tissue-specific gene expression and sexual conflict in stalk-eyed flies (Diopsidae). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B, 367: 2357-2375.
Keesing, F, P Oberoi*, R Vaicekonyte, K Gowen*, L Henry, S Mount, P Johns, R Ostfeld. 2011. Effects of garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) on entomopathogenic fungi. Ecoscience 18: 164-168.
Maxwell, MR, KL Barry, PM Johns. 2010. Examinations of female pheromone use in two praying mantids, Stagmomantis limbata and Tenodera aridifolia sinensis (Mantodea: Mantidae). Annals of the Entomological Society of America 103: 103: 120-127.
Johns, PM, KJ Howard, NL Breisch, A Rivera*, BL Thorne. 2009. Nonrelatives inherit colony resources in a primitive termite. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106: 17452-7456.
Johns, PM, and GS Wilkinson. 2007. X chromosome influences sperm length in the stalk-eyed fly Cyrtodiopsis dalmanni. Heredity 99:56-61.
Wilkinson, GS, PM Johns, ES Kelleher, and ML Muscedere. 2006. Fitness effects of X chromosome drive in the stalk-eyed fly, Cyrtodiopsis dalmanni. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, currently published online.
Johns, PM, LM Wolfenbarger, GS Wilkinson. 2005. Genetic linkage between a sexually selected trait and X chromosome meiotic drive. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B 272: 2097-2103
Nobile, CJM*, and PM Johns. 2005. Prelude to a kiss: mate discrimination in the striped bark scorpion, Centruroides vittatus. Journal of Insect Behavior, 18: 405-413.
Wilkinson, GS, and PM Johns. 2005. Sexual selection and the evolution of fly mating systems. In: The Biology of the Diptera. (D.K. Yeates and B.M. Weigmann, eds.) pp. 312-339. Columbia University Press, New York.
Wilkinson, GS, EG Amitin, and PM Johns. 2005. Sex-linked correlated responses in female reproductive traits to selection on male eye span in stalk-eyed flies. Integrative and Comparative Biology 45: 500-510
Swallow, JG, LE Wallace, SJ Christianson, PM Johns, and GS Wilkinson. 2005. Genetic divergence does not predict change in ornament expression among populations of stalk-eyed flies. MolecularEcology 14: 3787-3800.
Wright, TF, PM Johns, JR Walters, AP Lerner, JG Swallow, and GS Wilkinson. 2004. Microsatellite variation among divergent populations of stalk-eyed flies, genus Cyrtodiopsis. Genetical Research 84: 27-40.
Riechert, SE, and PM Johns. 2003. Do female spiders select heavier males for the “good genes” they possess? Evolution 57: 1367-1373.
Johns, PM., and MR Maxwell. 1997. Sexual cannibalism: who benefits? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12: 127-128.
Scientific Inquiry
Quantitative Reasoning