Atomic Ecology Meets.... Dr. Jessica Leuders-Dumont

Over the Easter break, I had a really engaging conversation with Jessica Lueders-Dumont, Senior Research Associate at Boston College, for the latest Atomic Ecology Meets.

Jessica uses stable isotope ecology to explore how ecosystems function — and how that function changes over time. In a recent paper in Nature, she demonstrates how nitrogen isotope analysis of fish otoliths can reveal shifts in reef ecosystem function over thousands of years.

What makes this work especially exciting is the method itself: Jessica has developed an approach to extract enough organic nitrogen from fossilised otoliths to reconstruct how fish lived in the distant past. This opens up real opportunities for fisheries science — particularly the use of archived samples to understand long-term change and inform management today.

We also chat about her path into academia… and what it feels like when Nature says yes!

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