Recalling Margaret Bryan Davis, Pioneer in Paleoecology and Trailblazer for Women in Ecology 1931–2024

Abstract

As detailed in Hotchkiss et al. (2025), Margaret Bryan Davis studied long-term change in forests and greatly accelerated developments within the fields of paleoecology and Quaternary palynology in her efforts to understand how forests respond to disturbance and environmental change. She used fossil pollen from cores of lake sediments and soil to reconstruct plant communities and migration patterns of trees over the last 14,000 years during and after glacial retreat. Her work demonstrated that tree species have independent migration paths, assembling into communities based on their own dispersal abilities and environmental constraints. This work essentially ended the debate between community ecologists Frederick Clemens and Henry Gleason about whether communities are “superorganisms” or co-occurring species, assembled independently. Her research laid the foundation for understanding and predicting changes in forest composition in response to climate change. Because of her work, Margaret was one of the first women elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1982), and she was awarded both ESA's Eminent Ecologist Award (1993) and the William S. Cooper Award (2011). She also was elected to serve as the President of ESA (1987–1988).

Margaret navigated ecology at a time when women were poorly represented in the discipline and often blocked from participation. On at least one occasion, she was denied a faculty position and told that it should be reserved for a man. When she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1982, the engraved award she was handed at the ceremony used male pronouns, which she refused to let them correct. She studied plant physiology and ecology at Radcliffe College, graduated in 1953, and completed a Ph.D. in biology at Harvard University in 1957. She worked in Greenland on fossil pollen from the Quaternary period during a Fulbright fellowship. After several postdoctoral fellowships, she joined the Botany Department at the University of Michigan in a non-faculty research position to be near her then husband. She was later promoted to full professor but remained the lowest paid member of the faculty at her rank. Only by threatening a lawsuit was she able to receive a salary increase and back pay. In 1973, she joined the biology faculty at Yale University. Despite her success there, she was frustrated by the institutional culture at the time and left the position in 1976 to become head of the relatively new Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior (EEB) at the University of Minnesota. During her career, she mentored many notable doctoral students, including Sara Hotchkiss (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and post-docs, including Thompson Webb III (Brown University) and Shinya Sugita (Tallinn University in Estonia).

Margaret played a pivotal role in establishing EEB at the University of Minnesota as one of the leading ecology and biodiversity departments in the world, which she ensured was both gender-balanced and met a high standard of excellence. Under her watch, she set EEB on an extraordinary trajectory of contributions to the discipline by creating a departmental culture valuing breadth, concepts, and collaboration.

Margaret had an outsized influence on the early careers of many women in science, including those of the authors. For example, as a graduating college senior, Elizabeth sent letters to faculty whose work she admired inquiring about lab technician positions in ecological research. Margaret was one of the few faculty members who replied. Although Margaret did not have funds to hire a research technician, she passed along Elizabeth's resumé, which resulted in two offers of summer research positions in EEB, starting Elizabeth's career in ecology. Elizabeth finally met and personally thanked Margaret at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the University of Minnesota EEB Department where Elizabeth gave a short lecture on the trajectory and influence of Margaret's career. Margaret went out of her way to mentor junior faculty, including authors Sarah and Jeannine, with similarly long-lasting impacts on our careers. She was warm, eager to talk, and genuinely interested in our work. She recognized the challenges facing new assistant professors, especially women, and cautioned Jeannine to avoid extra committee work and urged her to invest time into what she felt was her most important research and not to worry about publishing in high-profile journals as much as getting the work done well. Margaret often offered advice with a touch of wry humor, telling Sarah that “It's best to cultivate an air of slight incompetence, or everyone will ask you to do everything,” and assuring Sarah that she should feel very heartened when her course in ecosystem ecology was “not a disaster” the first time she taught it. Decades before the COVID pandemic made it customary to work from home, Margaret encouraged both Jeannine and Sarah to work at home one or two mornings to maintain productivity.

Most importantly, Margaret valued scientific rigor and excellence and urged us to hold graduate students and other colleagues to high standards. Her insights, advice, and work approach helped establish a departmental culture of high quality and hard work, with a dose of humor. 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. Despite having battled her way through academia in a system that was not set up for her, she was a highly positive person and an incredibly supportive mentor. We will be forever grateful to Margaret for paving the way for us.