Jason Newton

I manage the Natural Environment Research Council Life Sciences Mass Spectrometry Facility, East Kilbride, specialising in making stable isotope measurements of animal and plant tissues.

Research includes food web ecology – elucidating the diet(s) of animals, and mapping animal migration/dispersal. The technique is particularly useful where the species under investigation are cryptic – e.g. diet of marine mammals that are difficult to observe, or mapping the migration of insects which are too small for transmitters.

We analyse current and archived tissue biopsies, allowing us to investigate diets of both the past and present, identifying potential effects of climate change on different species. This is one technique that will be used on the small benthic fauna through the Arctic PRIZE project.