Rate My Professor Charles Davis

Charles C. Davis is Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, where he holds the positions of Curator of Vascular Plants in the Harvard University Herbaria and Director of the Harvard University Herbaria. His research integrates the disciplines of systematics, paleobiology, evolution, ecology, and molecular biology through phylogenetic theory to reconstruct the history of plant diversity across space and time. Davis investigates biogeography, biome evolution, plant-insect interactions, and horizontal gene transfer, employing fieldwork, specimen-based studies in herbaria collections, and molecular laboratory approaches. Recent projects address the origins of intercontinental disjunctions, the age of modern tropical rainforests, mechanisms maintaining morphological stasis, the peculiar genetics of endoparasitic plants such as Rafflesia and Sapria himalayana, and plant responses to anthropogenic climate change, including phenological shifts and biodiversity loss.

Davis has published extensively in leading journals, with key works including “A composite universal DNA signature for the tree of life” (Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2025), “Medicinal Plants Meet Modern Biodiversity Science” with Patrick Choisy (Current Biology, 2024), “Collections are truly priceless” (Science, 2024), “The herbarium of the future” (Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2023), and “Deeply Altered Genome Architecture in the Endoparasitic Flowering Plant Sapria himalayana Griff. (Rafflesiaceae)” (Current Biology, 2021). His contributions emphasize the vital role of herbaria in contemporary biodiversity science and climate research. As director of the Davis Lab, he leads studies on species responses to environmental change, phylogenomics, systematics, biogeography, biome evolution, and symbioses. Davis engages the public through initiatives like the exhibit “In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers: An Exploration of Change and Loss” at Harvard’s Museum of Natural History, illustrating long-term ecological shifts using herbarium specimens.