Jeannine Cavender-Bares


Jeannine Cavender-Bares is Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard University Herbaria. She is also adjunct professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior at the University of Minnesota, where she served on the faculty for over two decades. Her research integrates evolutionary biology, ecology, and physiology by studying the functional traits of plants, with a particular focus on oaks.
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Early life and education

Cavender-Bares grew up in Athens, Ohio. She received her B.A. in environmental sciences from Cornell University in 1990, her Masters in forestry and global change from Yale University in 1992 and her PhD from Harvard University in 2000. At Harvard, Jeannine worked with Fakhri A. Bazzaz and studied the physiological and evolutionary ecology of oaks. She then worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center with Catherine Lovelock and at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Montpellier with Serge Rambal and Richard Joffre.

Career and research

She is a prominent evolutionary ecologist whose research integrates ecosystem ecology, plant physiology, community assembly and phylogenetics, with a significant emphasis on "spectral biology"—the use of spectroscopy and remote sensing to gain insight into biological processes. Cavender-Bares' research group uses concepts from the evolutionary history of plant physiology to understand how ecosystems function in the face of global climate change, as well as how changes in biodiversity and ecosystem function can be remotely sensed. She led the design and establishment of several long-term experiments at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve and at the Harvard Forest, including the Forest and Biodiversity experiments. Her work on oaks as a model clade has emphasized the role of diversification in community assembly.
Cavender-Bares is the Director of the NSF-funded biology integration institute on using spectral biology and predictive models for the study of biodiversity and global change. She was lead principal investigator of the NSF/NASA Dimensions of biodiversity project "Linking remotely sensed optical diversity to genetic, phylogenetic and functional diversity to predict ecosystem processes" and lead editor for the open access book .
She has contributed to national and international efforts to assess and monitor biodiversity. She was one of the coordinating lead authors of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services report for the Americas. The IPBES is an independent intergovernmental body supported by multiple nations with the mission to "strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development." She served on the NASA Working Group that authored the 2022 NASA Biological Diversity and Ecological Forecasting Report: Current State of Knowledge and Considerations for the Next Decade. In 2016, she helped launch the Oaks of the Americas Conservation Network, which promotes the protection of oak species across North America.
She serves on the Governing Board of the Ecological Society of America and the Steering Committee of the . She was appointed to serve on the public facing Biological Sciences Advisory Committee to the from 2019 to 2021.

Publications

As of 2025, Cavender-Bares has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, international assessments or book chapters that have been cited over 45,000 times.
Some of her most important papers as first author include:
  • J Cavender-Bares, DM White, NI Ahlstrand, MW Austin, D Bastianelli, S Bazan, et al., Next-generation specimen digitization: capturing reflectance spectra from the world's herbaria for modeling plant biology across time, space, and taxa. New Phytol. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.70645
  • J Cavender-Bares, JE Meireles, J Pinto-Ledezma, PB Reich, MC Schuman, PA Townsend, and A Trowbridge. Spectral biology across scales in changing environments. Ecology 106: e70078. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70078
  • J Cavender-Bares, FD Schneider, JM Santos, et al.. Integrating remote sensing with ecology and evolution to advance biodiversity conservation. Nat Ecol Evol 6, 506–519.
  • J Cavender-Bares, Diversification, adaptation, and community assembly of the American oaks (Quercus), a model clade for integrating ecology and evolution. New Phytol, 221, 669–692.
  • J Cavender-Bares, JA Gamon, SE Hobbie, MD Madritch, JE Meireles et al. . American Journal of Botany 104, 1–4.
  • J Cavender-Bares, D Ackerly, S Hobbie, P Townsend . Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 47, 433–62
  • J Cavender-Bares, S Polasky, E King, and P Balvanera. . Ecology and Society 20, no. 1.
  • J Cavender-Bares, A González-Rodríguez, D Eaton, A Hipp, A Beulke, P Manos. Phylogeny and biogeography of the American live oaks (Quercus subsection Virentes): a genomic and population genetics approach. Mol Ecol, 24, 3668–3687.
  • J Cavender-Bares, PB Reich . Ecology 93, S52-S69.
  • J Cavender-Bares, KH Kozak, PVA Fine, SW Kembel. . Ecology Letters 12, 693–715.
  • J Cavender-Bares, A Keen, B Miles. . Ecology 87, S109-S122.
  • J Cavender-Bares, DD Ackerly, DA Baum, FA Bazzaz. . The American Naturalist 163, 823–843.
  • J Cavender-Bares, K Kitajima, FA Bazzaz. . Ecological Monographs 74, 635–662.
  • J Cavender-Bares, FA Bazzaz. s. Oecologia 124, 8–18.