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. He joined the faculty at the University of South Carolina in 1991 and is currently the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Professor Mousseau’s experience includes having served as 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 100 scholarly articles and has edited two books (Maternal Effects as Adaptations, 1998; Adaptive Genetic Variation in the Wild, 2000; 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.
His books and papers have been cited over 4300 times, and he has been funded since 1988 by NSF, USDA, DOD, CNRS, SCDNR, NFWF, NATO, NSERC (Canada), CNRS (France), the National Geographic Society, the Sea Grant Consortium, the Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust, and a number of private foundations. He 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 adaptive variation, and the evolution of maternal effects.
Since 1999, Professor Mousseau and his collaborators have explored the ecological and evolutionary consequences of low-dose radiation in natural populations inhabiting the Chernobyl region of Ukraine. His research suggests that many species of plants and animals suffer from 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 elucidating the causes of variation among different species in their apparent sensitivity to radionuclide exposure.
Information about Mousseau’s Chernobyl Research.
Contact information:
email: mousseau@sc.edu
College of Arts and Sciences
Gambrell Hall, Rm 251
University of South Carolina
Columbia SC 29208 USA
tel: 803-777-1934; fax: 803-777-4532
or
Department of Biological Sciences
Coker Life Sciences Rm 706
Columbia SC 29208 USA
tel: 803-777-8047; fax:803-777-4002