home > TRiO and USP Programs > McNair > symposium > 2001 presentations > Bill Bradshaw and Chris Holzapfel

Bill Bradshaw, Mentor
Biology

Chris Holzapfel, Mentor
Biology

Tanya McKitrick, McNair Scholar

Both William Bradshaw and Christina Holzapfel earned Ph.D. degrees in zoology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1969 and 1970 respectively) and did post-doctoral work at Harvard University. The two married in 1971 and moved to Oregon and the UO. Since then they have worked together on the genetics, ecology, evolution, physiology, behavior, and natural history of container-breeding mosquitoes such as Wyeomyia smithii, which lives only in the water-filled leaves of the purple pitcher plant. They work as a closely-integrated unit as they conduct their research and mentor students, graduate and undergraduate, in the craft of experimental research. “We find both pursuits consumingly rewarding and have no intention of retiring as long as there are interesting questions to be answered and enthusiastic larval investigators to train.” While many publications have flowed from their pens or from their lab, recent efforts include: “Protandry: the Relationship Between Emergence Time and Male Fitness in the Pitcher-Plant Mosquito, Wyeomyia smithii,” Ecology (in press); “Phenotypic Evolution and the Genetic Architecture Underlying Photoperiodic Time Measurement,” Journal of Insect Physiology, 2001; and “The evolution of genetic architectures and the divergence of natural populations” in J. Wolf, E. D. Brodie, and M. Wade, eds., Epistasis and the Evolutionary Process, Oxford University Press, 2000.