University of South Carolina

Faculty Member, Biological Sciences

Professor of Biological Sciences

Arts & Sciences

About

Professor Timothy Mousseau received his doctoral degree in 1988 from McGill University and completed a NSERC (Canada) postdoctoral fellowship in Population Biology at the University of California, Davis, before joining the faculty of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina in 1991.

Professor Mousseau's experience includes having served as Associate Vice President for Research, Dean of the Graduate School, and Associate Dean for Research, a program officer at the National Science Foundation, on the editorial board for several journals, and on NSF, USGS, and a variety of international grant foundation advisory panels. He has published over 130 scholarly articles and has edited two books (Maternal Effects as Adaptations, 1998, with Charles Fox; Adaptive Genetic Variation in the Wild, 2000, with Barry Sinervo and John Endler; both published by Oxford University Press). He is currently co-editor-in-chief of a new annual review series, The Year in Evolutionary Biology, published by the New York Academy of Sciences. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2008, a Fellow National of the Explorers Club in 2009, and a member of the Cosmos Club in 2011.

Dr. Mousseau and his students have worked on a wide diversity of organisms, from bacteria to beetles to birds, and his primary areas of research interest include the genetic basis of adaptation in natural populations. Since 1999, Professor Mousseau and his collaborators have explored the ecological, genetic and evolutionary consequences of low-dose radiation in populations of plants, animals and people inhabiting the Chernobyl region of Ukraine and Belarus. He recently initiated a second research program in Fukushima, Japan.  His research suggests that many species of plants and animals experience increased mutational loads as a result of exposure to radionuclides stemming from the Chernobyl disaster. In some species (e.g. the barn swallow, Hirundo rustica), this mutational load has had dramatic consequences for reproduction and survival. Dr. Mousseau's current research is aimed at accurately assessing doses received by animals living in the wild and elucidating the causes of variation among different species in their apparent sensitivity to radionuclide exposure. This research program has recently been expanded to include impacts to the flora and fauna of the Fukushima region of Japan.

Contact Information