Rexford F. Daubenmire (12 December 1909 — 27 August 1995) was an American botanist and plant ecologist. He made significant contributions to the study of plant ecology throughout the twentieth century, including introducing a vegetation classification scheme, helping define the modern study of ecological succession, and writing the standard reference textbooks for ecologists of the time period. He helped pioneer the sampling techniques still used in vegetation measurement. He served as president of the Ecological Society of America for 1967 and was the 1979 recipient of the Eminent Ecologist Award.
Early life and education Daubenmire was born on 12 December 1909 in Coldwater, Ohio, but grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father worked on the Pennsylvania Railroad and he was an only child. He earned a Bachelor's degree in botany from Butler University in 1930, graduating magna cum laude. He studied under Ray C. Freisner, head of the botany department, and Stanley A. Cain, a plant ecologist, who both influenced his eventual career. He earned a Masters of Science from the University of Colorado in 1932, studying under Francis Ramaley. He studied the relationship between altitudinal distribution and structures of leaf and conifer twigs. Daubenmire's doctorate was done at the University of Minnesota under ecologist William Skinner Cooper. Following the mentorship of Cooper, he adopted a view of ecology in which a complex natural system involved both abiotic (non-living) and biotic (living) components, being an early adopter of the word "ecosystem" to describe this view. He performed an ecological study of the Big Woods, a temperate hardwood forest ecoregion found in Minnesota. After graduating, he filled a temporary teaching position at the University of Tennessee.
Personal life Daubenmire married Jean Boomer in 1938, having met her in Idaho. She also had a Masters of Science degree in plant ecology and assisted him with many of his studies. They performed much of the field work together, and her assistance was acknowledged in many of his publications. The couple had one daughter, Janet.
Career
University work Daubenmire taught botany at the University of Idaho for ten years, from 1936 to 1946. In addition to this job, during summers he taught at the Lake Itasca Field Station of University of Minnesota and at the University of Wyoming. During World War II, he taught chemistry to American military personnel. In 1947, he moved to Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, where much of his research was undertaken. In 1948, only one year after joining WSU's faculty, he created a six-week intensive summer field course for surveying in the Rocky Mountains. He was joined by seven students from universities in Idaho, Michigan, Montana, and Tennessee, as well as his wife Jean Boomer, who was also a botanist. From 1 July through 12 August, the group travelled over 3,000 miles, visiting areas of ecological interest including Palouse Falls, Lookout Pass, Great Falls, Big Timber Canyon, and Glacier National Park. During his tenure, he took trips on his sabbatical years to Costa Rica and Sweden. He was a member of the Ecological Society of America. He served in positions including chairman and vice-chairman of the Western Section, and was a member of the editorial board, the Survey and Planning Committee, the Committee on Vegetation, and the Committee on Applied Ecology. He served as president of the society for the year of 1967. Daubenmire taught for twenty-nine years at WSU, retiring in 1975, whereupon he was appointed professor emeritus. Between both Idaho and Washington State, he mentored thirty-five PhD students and eighteen Master's students. Some of his students include F. Herbert Bormann and Tom Tidwell.
Retirement After retirement, he and his wife moved to Florida, where they continued studying plant ecology. He studied the plant communities of Florida, and published multiple books and papers. The Daubenmires travelled to multiple locations, including the Amazon rainforest, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Africa, and Rexford led naturalist trips to Ecuador and Costa Rica.
Death Daubenmire died on 27 August 1995 in Sorrento, Florida.
Research
Continuum vs. Community debate In the early to mid twentieth century, there was debate among plant ecologists as to whether plant communities were randomly established within a continuum, or if they formed discrete and predictable entities. The continuum theory preexisted Daubenmire's community theory, having been championed initially by Henry Allan Gleason, and re-established in the 1950s by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor John Thomas Curtis. It proposed that over an area, a plant species would appear, increase in quantity, then decline, and finally disappear, without distinct communities that could be predictably understood. Much of Daubenmire's early research was focused on this subject. He criticized Curtis's continuum theory, noting that it was unable to provide any meaningful results because it did not have an organizing principle and could not make predictions. He also argued against their methods — mathematically tabulating the abundance of distribution of plant species — as missing factors beyond just the plants themselves, and that population structures and dynamics were more complex than could be understood just with statistics. Daubenmire instead proposed the community theory: that all organisms within a community were necessarily ecologically interconnected, though the nature and degree of the interrelations changed depending on context: either obligative or indirect. His work helped pioneer the "ecology of place," understanding how predictions could promote better environmental health and broader ecosystems, while also servicing human needs for natural resources through a scientifically informed process. Decades prior to any fully established understanding of environmentalism, he recognized that an accurate understanding of ecosystems required knowledge of how plant communities operated outside of human economic concerns such as logging and grazing.
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