Rate My Professor Sheri Johnson

Associate Professor Sheri Johnson serves in the Department of Zoology at the University of Otago, within the Division of Sciences. A Canadian-born behavioural ecologist, she obtained her BSc (Honours) from Dalhousie University and completed her PhD at the University of Maine in 2007. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Florida, she joined Otago as a research associate in the Department of Anatomy in 2010, advancing through senior lecturer to her current associate professor position in Zoology. She is also affiliated with the Centre for Reproduction and Genomics.

Johnson's research employs an integrative approach combining molecular biology, field ecology, reproductive biology, and behavioural analysis to investigate sexual selection, mating system evolution, sperm biology, and human-induced impacts on reproductive ecology and behaviour. Her interests span behavioural ecology, evolutionary ecology, molecular ecology, ecological genetics, reproductive biology, environmental epigenetics, behavioural genomics, and insect conservation, with study systems including zebrafish, tree weta, stag beetles, and triplefin fish. Prominent publications include "Consistent age-dependent declines in human semen quality: A systematic review and meta-analysis" (2015), "Paternal exposure to a common herbicide alters the behavior and serotonergic system of zebrafish offspring" (2020), "Paternal hypoxia exposure primes offspring for increased hypoxia resistance" (2022), "Brain-encysting trematodes increase the frequency but reduce the repeatability of surfacing behaviour in mottled triplefin" (2025), and "Body and mandible size as key factors in male contest outcomes in Helm’s stag beetles" (2025). Her work has amassed over 1,700 citations on Google Scholar.

She delivers courses such as Animal Biology, Animal Physiology, Behavioural and Evolutionary Ecology, and Advanced Topics in Animal Behaviour, while supervising numerous MSc and PhD students on diverse topics from insect mating systems to transgenerational acclimation in fishes. Johnson earned the University of Otago Early Career Award in 2015 and secured a Marsden Fund Fast-Start grant of $840,000. She contributes as an editor at PeerJ, co-guest editor for a special issue of the New Zealand Journal of Zoology, and secretary of the Entomological Society of New Zealand.