Professor Steven Johnson

Professor Steven Johnson’s research focuses on pollination biology, evolution, plant speciation, insect-plant relationships, and floral deception and mimicry.

He obtained a BSc honours and PhD in botany from the University of Cape Town. He then worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Haifa in Israel and at Uppsala University in Sweden before moving to UCT, where he became a Smuts Post-doctoral Fellow. He is currently a full professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and holds the DST/NRF South African Research Chair in Evolutionary Biology.

Johnson’s work has opened up new areas of understanding, particularly of pollination systems and floral specialisation in South African flora, and how plants attract and utilise pollinators such as insects, birds and rodents, as well as of the reproductive ecology of invasive plant species. He has supervised 11 PhD and 12 MSc students to completion and is currently working with a further four PhD and 10 MSc students.

During the course of his career he has published or co-published more than 260 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Evolution, Ecology Letters and Trends in Ecology and Evolution, as well as several books and book chapters. His book Table Mountain: a Natural History, which he co-authored with Anton Pauw, won both the UCT Merit Book Award and the UKZN General Book Prize. He has served on the editorial boards of Oecologia, Arthropod-Plant Interactions, and Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences and has acted as a reviewer for numerous other journals.

Johnson’s work has garnered considerable recognition over the years. He has received, among others, the South African Association of Botanists (SAAB) Best Young Scientist Award; National Research Foundation President’s Award, and the UKZN Vice-Chancellor’s Research Award.