Remembering Dr. Lea Richardson
For more than a year, now, there’s been a hole in the Yoder Lab. Last March, postdoctoral scholar Lea Richardson was admitted to the hospital with neurological symptoms that were soon diagnosed as the results of metastatic melanoma. Lea spent the subsequent months in full-time treatment and recovery from the effects of treatments, and although we were not in close contact — she had more pressing concerns than keeping us up to date on details — we had thought as recently as a month ago that she might be able to rejoin the lab in April. A few days ago, though, we got word from Lea’s partner that she passed away last Friday. Her loss is a blow to the lab, and to the Department of Biology at CSUN, and, I really think, to the field of plant ecology.
Lea grew up in Los Angeles, and began her scientific career as a biology teacher at North Hollywood High School Highly Gifted Magnet. After discovering a passion for research on a summer field experience for K-12 educators, she earned her doctorate at Northwestern University studying the population dynamics of long-lived perennials in the Midwestern Prairie with the Echinacea Project — her Ph.D. mentor Stuart Wagenius has written a remembrance of her time there. Lea joined the Yoder Lab to work with the Joshua Tree Genomic Inventory data, and threw herself into learning the bioinformatics necessary; she presented results from her analyses at the Evolution and Ecology meetings, and at multiple smaller conferences for land managers and restoration biologists working in the Mojave Desert. As the NSF grant supporting her position wound down, Lea won a Scientists in Parks Fellowship from the National Parks Foundation, for a collaboration with staff scientists at Saguaro National Park analyzing years of data on the health of saguaro populations — she was about six months into that work when she was first hospitalized.
Along the way, Lea made lasting contributions to teaching and mentoring in the lab, and to the Department of Biology more broadly. She taught a section of our introductory course for Biology majors, drawing on her roots as a high school teacher, and received glowing reviews. She mentored and co-mentored students working in the lab; frequently joined meetings of the department’s student-led Behavior, Ecology, and Evolution Reading Club; and helped manage field trips to take demographic profiles of Joshua tree populations. Lea was so well attuned with the student-focused spirit and community of CSUN Biology that, when we ran a search for a tenure-track Plant Conservation Biology position in fall 2024, she advanced to a campus interview, and she gave an exceptionally well received job talk.
Lea was a smart and thoughtful colleague, and she actively supported the broader community of science as she advanced our understanding of how plant populations respond to long-term processes of environmental change and recover from sudden disruptions like wildfire. Her published work includes advocacy toward improving the culture of science as well as foundational plant ecology. I fully believed her time in the lab was laying the groundwork for a long career of positive contributions to teaching, scholarship, and biodiversity conservation. It has been challenging not to have her in the lab over the past year, and it is devastating to know now that she will not be rejoining us.
