Margaret Davis was a visionary whose pioneering science defined the field of paleoecology. Her influence went far beyond groundbreaking findings. The first woman at the University of Minnesota elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Regents Professor and department head. Beloved mentor and role model. Davis’ list of achievements and accolades is long.
Davis arrived at the University of Minnesota in 1976 following positions at Michigan and Yale. She joined the newly formed Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior (EEB), where she served as department head until 1981. Over the next three decades, until she retired in 2002, she helped establish it as one of the leading departments in the world, contributing significantly to the reputation of the then-young College of Biological Sciences.
Although she retired more than two decades ago and died last year, her contributions continue to resonate. Davis is among the “greats” who put the University on the map for ecology and set the stage for its consistent top ranking in the subject. This influence starts with her field-shaping contributions as a researcher.
The researcher
“She laid the groundwork for people to learn more about climate change,” says Elizabeth Borer, a Regents Professor in EEB. She did this by analyzing fossilized pollen to reconstruct past plant communities and predict the future. She was at the vanguard of an emerging understanding of how community dynamics shifted in a rapidly changing climate.
One assumption she challenged in her early career was the notion that forest communities acted as a single entity, that communities moved together as one. She studied this by meticulously identifying and dating pollen samples pulled from sediment cores across several states, ultimately creating detailed and vivid maps that tracked individual tree species shifting north by different routes and at different speeds following the last ice age.
She was also able to use these maps and known temperature ranges of trees to reconstruct past climatic conditions. She was one of just a few researchers at the time studying how plant communities responded to changing climate and paved the way for future researchers’ focus on human-caused climate change.
Later, she investigated how species with different modes of dispersal arrived at new locations. In particular, she studied how hemlock and beech came to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and eastern Wisconsin.
Stephen T. Jackson, a paleoecologist and professor emeritus of botany and ecology at the University of Wyoming, wrote about Davis’ accomplishments and impact on the field in a recent paper in The American Naturalist. While Jackson never worked with Davis directly, he was impressed with her desire to build scientific consensus while at the same time being open to adjusting her outlook given strong evidence and solid arguments.
Davis spent time in the field with her students, and they fondly remember days spent wandering the field site. In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, written by several former graduate students, they write: “She was most at ease while walking through the forest on field trips to Sylvania [in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula]. On these occasions, she could be mirthful, singing, and telling stories.”
The equity champion
While Davis was laser-focused on advancing science, she knew it didn’t happen in a vacuum. She was acutely aware of gender inequities and fought tirelessly throughout her career to close the pay gap between male and female colleagues.
Borer and fellow EEB Regents Professor Sarah Hobbie co-wrote a paper about Davis with Jeannine Cavender-Bares, a former professor in the department, which was published in The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. They note that, “While Margaret later expressed that she only wanted the freedom to focus on research without having to take on issues of gender, she recognized that it was necessary for her to work to increase equity in order to achieve that freedom for others, as well as herself.”
The collaborator
Davis was an equal opportunity collaborator. She sought out creative thinkers and problem solvers with little regard for seniority and an openness to other disciplines. Larry Edwards was a newly minted faculty member in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences when Davis first called him up. She invited him to co-write a grant focused on training graduate students across disciplines. Now a Regents Professor, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a National Medal of Science recipient, Edwards recalls: “At that time, I was nobody, yet she was looking out for me.”
That grant was so successful that it became a template for similar interdisciplinary trainee programs funded by the National Science Foundation. Edwards notes that it wasn’t just in the initial act of reaching out, either. She was keen to brainstorm ways to better collaborate and pool resources to advance science.
Across campus at around the same time, Ruth Shaw, a professor in EEB, also experienced Davis’ enthusiasm for striking up new collaborations. An evolutionary biologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, Shaw studies genetic variability in plant populations, and part of her work challenges the idea that adaptation is inherently a tediously slow process. This concept contradicted a generally held consensus at the time that evolution could not be studied in “real time” and the fossil record was the only way to witness adaptations. “Rapid evolutionary change was threatening to the field of paleoecology, but not to Margaret,” she says.
Shaw was impressed by Davis’ open mind and interest in her work, especially as a more junior faculty member who was new to the department. Several years later, Davis asked Shaw to co-write an invited paper with her.
“It was a different process for collaborating on a paper than I had ever had or have ever had since,” reflects Shaw. Instead of tweaking a small section, Davis would often scrap a draft and produce an entirely new version. Through this process, Shaw felt like Davis was slowly incorporating this new idea — that evolution could happen quite quickly — deeper into her scientific approach. The notion that ecology and evolution inform each other was not well accepted across the disciplines yet, but it was something that Shaw and Davis worked together to articulate in the highly cited paper.
The mentor
When she wasn’t directly partnering with colleagues, Davis was still looking out for them, especially junior faculty. When Hobbie was a new assistant professor, Davis encouraged her to prioritize time to write. She encouraged Hobbie to work from home a couple of mornings a week — long before the practice was normalized — to maintain focus and productivity.
And Davis didn’t just influence faculty peers or advisees. Borer remembers first learning about Davis’ work in college and being completely entranced. When graduating, she sent letters to a number of faculty, inquiring about the possibility of employment as a lab tech. “Margaret was one of the few faculty members who replied,” says Borer. While Davis didn’t have funds to hire Borer, she passed Borer’s name on to others in the EEB department, helping her land her first job out of college. “I still have the letter and credit Margaret with helping launch my career in ecology.”
Through her science, dedication to equity, commitment to collaboration, and ability to mentor and influence both peers and students, Davis created a powerful, enduring legacy. Next time you take a stroll down Scholars Walk on the University of Minnesota’s East Bank campus, make sure to take a moment to reflect on the contributions of this College of Biological Sciences great. –Claire Wilson
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The College of Biological Sciences turns 60 this year, and we are celebrating the many people who helped shape our history and culture. Davis is among the “CBS greats” who left a profound imprint on science and the College.