Nikolas Johnston

Nikolas Johnston is a Lecturer at the University of Wollongong's School of Chemistry and Molecular Bioscience. His research focuses on insect genomics, forensic entomology, and the ecological roles of flies, particularly blowflies and flesh flies. He investigates antibiotic compounds from blowflies, forensic applications of maggot growth rates, and the potential of flies as pollinators. Johnston has described over 20 new fly species and contributed to global blowfly genomic phylogenies.

Research Interests:

• Forensic entomology for postmortem interval estimation
• Insect molecular biology and genomics
• Species delimitation and integrative taxonomy
• Evolutionary biology of flies

Funding:

• New Colombo Plan (2025)
• UOW Interdisciplinary Grant (2025)
• Australian Biological Resources Study (2022)

Teaching & Supervision:

• Coordinates BIOL340: Cell Molecular Biology
• Supervising PhD projects on Polleniidae systematics and Australian blowfly diversity

Labs/Teams:

Active in the Molecular Horizons research group within the School of Science at the University of Wollongong.