Timothy A Mousseau

University of South Carolina | USC · Department of Biological Sciences

Plain English Summary Wildlife populations can be greatly affected by disasters, whether they are natural or man-made. Disasters that result in contamination or habitat destruction can result in population declines or influence wildlife adaptation to these adverse environmental changes. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster released an enormou...

The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster initiated a series of catastrophic events resulting in long-term and widespread environmental contamination. We characterize the genetic structure of 302 dogs representing three free-roaming dog populations living within the power plant itself, as well as those 15 to 45 kilometers from the disaster site. Genome-w...

Nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere during the 1950s and 1960s deposited fallout throughout the world, exposing all humans to food and water before the Limited Test Ban Treaty ended large-scale tests. The largest effort to measure in vivo fallout in humans, performed by Washington University (USA), collected over 300,000 deciduous teeth to do...

Insights into the evolution of non-model organisms are limited by the lack of reference genomes of high accuracy, completeness, and contiguity. Here, we present a chromosome-level, karyotype-validated reference genome and pangenome for the barn swallow (Hirundo rustica). We complement these resources with a reference-free multialignment of the refe...

Despite advances in sequencing, lack of standardization makes comparisons across studies challenging and hampers insights into the structure and function of microbial communities across multiple habitats on a planetary scale. Here we present a multi-omics analysis of a diverse set of 880 microbial community samples collected for the Earth Microbiom...

Camera traps have recently become in-situ sensors for collecting information on animal abundance and occupancy estimates. When deployed over a large landscape, camera traps have become ideal for measuring the health of ecosystems, particularly in unstable habitats where it can be dangerous or even impossible to observe with conventional methods. Ho...

Evidence that exposure to environmental pollutants can alter the gut microbiota composition of wildlife includes studies of rodents exposed to radionuclides. Antwis et al. (2021) used amplicon sequencing to characterise the gut microbiota of four species of rodent (Myodes glareolus, Apodemus agrarius, A. flavicollis and A. sylvaticus) inhabiting th...

The barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) poses a number of fascinating scientific questions, including the taxonomic status of postulated subspecies. Here we obtained and assessed the sequence variation of 411 complete mitogenomes, mainly from the European H. r. rustica, but other subspecies as well. In almost every case, we observed subspecies-specific...

Birds are regarded as excellent bioindicators of anthropogenic environmental change, including changes due to the release of toxicants into ecosystems. Consistent with this, birds are among the best-studied groups of organisms under conditions of radioactive contamination. This includes the study of radionuclide transfer to their bodies as well as...

Geographical variation refers to differences among populations in genetically based traits across the natural geographic range of a species. Understanding the factors that create and maintain geographical variation helps elucidate the causes of evolution. In the simplest case, we divide these factors into purely genetic versus environmental compone...

Insights into the evolution of non-model organisms are often limited by the lack of reference genomes. As part of the Vertebrate Genomes Project, we present a new reference genome and a pangenome produced with High-Fidelity long reads for the barn swallow Hirundo rustica. We then generated a reference-free multialignment with other bird genomes to...

Sperm quantity and quality are key features explaining intra- and interspecific variation in male reproductive success. Spermatogenesis is sensitive to ionizing radiation and laboratory studies investigating acute effects of ionizing radiation have indeed found negative effects of radiation on sperm quantity and quality. In nature, levels of natura...

Environmental disasters offer the unique opportunity for landscape-scale ecological and evolutionary studies that are not possible in the laboratory or small experimental plots. The nuclear accident at Chernobyl (1986) allows for rigorous analyses of radiation effects on individuals and populations at an ecosystem scale. Here, the current state of...

• Camera traps have become an extensively utilized tool in ecological research, but the manual processing of images created by a network of camera traps rapidly becomes an overwhelming task, even for small camera trap studies. • We used transfer learning to create convolutional neural network (CNN) models for identification and classification. By u...

Anthropogenic stressors, such as radioactive contaminants released from the Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi accidents, deteriorate ecological and evolutionary processes, as evidence for damaging effects of radioactive contamination on wildlife is accumulating. Yet little is known about physiological traits of animals inhabiting contaminated areas,...

Species identity is thought to dominate over environment in shaping wild rodent gut microbiota, but it remains unknown whether the responses of host gut microbiota to shared anthropogenic habitat impacts are species‐specific or if the general gut microbiota response is similar across host species. Here, we compare the influence of exposure to radio...

Dogs were frequently employed as laboratory subjects during the era of atomic bomb testing (1950–1980), particularly in studies used to generate predictive data regarding the expected effects of accidental human occupational exposure to radiation. The bulk of these studies were only partly reported in the primary literature, despite providing vital...

Point 1: Camera traps have become an extensively utilized tool in ecological research, but the processing of images created by a network of camera traps rapidly becomes an overwhelming task, even for small networks. Point 2: We used transfer training to create convolutional neural network (CNN) models for identification and classification. By utili...

The present study concerns arthropod populations in two different environments, cultivated and natural regions of Djanet. We conducted qualitative and quantitative surveys over two seasons (summer and winter). Three sampling methods were used: pitfall traps, sweep nets, and yellow pan traps. Overall, 4480 individual arthropods were captured represe...

Let me express our gratitude for Dr K€ orblein's interest and deep analysis of our article. The authors have tried to answer every comment, that were very helpful to us. A few words about the methods of mathematical statistics that we use for analysis. Initially, many of our analyzes used linear regression, Poisson regression, quadratic and other t...

Vertebrate gut microbiota provide many essential services to their host. To better understand the diversity of such services provided by gut microbiota in wild rodents, we assembled metagenome shotgun sequence data from a small mammal, the bank vole Myodes glareolus (Rodentia, Cricetidae). We were able to identify 254 metagenome assembled genomes (...

1. Gut microbiota play an important role in host health. Yet, the drivers and patterns of microbiota imbalance (dysbiosis) in wild animals remain largely unexplored. 2. One hypothesised outcome of stress on animal microbiomes is a destabilised microbial community that is characterised by an increase in inter-individual differences compared with mic...

We re-analyzed field data concerning potential effects of ionizing radiation on the abundance of mammals collected in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) to interpret these findings from current knowledge of radiological dose–response relationships, here mammal response in terms of abundance. In line with recent work at Fukushima, and exploiting a c...

Background: Ionizing radiation and chemical pollution can disrupt normal embryonic development and lead to congenital malformations and fetal death. We used official government statistical data for 2000–2017 to test the hypothesis that radioactive and chemical pollutants influenced the frequency of de novo congenital malformations in newborns of th...

This study uses population genomic data to estimate demographic and selection parameters in two sister lineages of the wild yeast Saccharomyces paradoxus and compare their evolution. We first estimate nucleotide and recombinational diversities in each of the two lineages to infer their population size and frequency of sex and then analyse the rate...

Perhaps the main factor determining success of space travel will be the ability to control effects of ionizing radiation for humans, but also for other living organisms. Manned space travel will require the cultivation of food plants under conditions of prolonged exposure to ionizing radiation. Although there is a significant literature concerning...

The long‐term contamination that followed the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl provides a case study for the effects of chronic ionizing radiation on living organisms and on their ability to tolerate or evolve resistance to such radiation. Previously, we studied the fertility and viability of early developmental stages of a castrating plant pathogen,...

Mitochondria are sensitive to oxidative stress, including that derived from ionizing radiation. To quantify the effects of exposure to environmental radionuclides on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) dynamics in wildlife, bank voles (Myodes glareolus) were collected from the chernobyl exclusion zone (CEZ), where animals are exposed to elevated levels of ra...

Historically, radioecology is a branch of radiation biology that focuses on the movement of radionuclides through the biosphere and thereby affects ecological processes, but also the composition and the functioning of ecosystems. Modern radioecology has expanded to include studies of the consequences of radiation for biological processes (e.g., ada...

Nuclear accidents underpin the need to quantify the ecological mechanisms which determine injury to ecosystems from chronic low-dose radiation. Here, we tested the hypothesis that ecological mechanisms interact with ionizing radiation to affect natural populations in unexpected ways. We used large-scale replicated experiments and food manipulations...

The effects of ionizing radiation on living beings have been studied under lab conditions and in the field. The first approach may often lack in realism, while the second may lack rigorous experimental approaches. Because ionizing radiation may interact with other stressors such as heavy metals and climatic conditions, it is difficult to assess the...

Telomeres, the protective structures at the ends of chromosomes, can be shortened when individuals are exposed to stress. In some species, the enzyme telomerase is expressed in adult somatic tissues, and potentially protects or lengthens telomeres. Telomeres can be damaged by ionizing radiation and oxidative stress, although the effect of chronic e...

This article presents the results of a workshop held in Stirling, Scotland in June 2018, called to examine critically the effects of low-dose ionising radiation on the ecosphere. The meeting brought together participants from the fields of low- and high-dose radiobiology and those working in radioecology to discuss the effects that low doses of rad...

Soil is inhabited by a range of microbes, invertebrates and vertebrates that disintegrate and decompose dead wood and leaf litter. These communities can be perturbed by ionizing radiation from natural radiation sources or from radiation originating from nuclear accidents such as those at Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island. We used experimen...

Gut microbiota composition depends on many factors, although the impact of environmental pollution is largely unknown. We used amplicon sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes to quantify whether anthropogenic radionuclides at Chernobyl (Ukraine) impact the gut microbiome of the bank vole Myodes glareolus. Exposure to elevated levels of environmenta...

Ionizing radiation from nuclear accidents at Chernobyl, Fukushima and elsewhere has reduced the abundance, species richness and diversity of ecosystems. Here we analyzed the taxonomic, functional and evolutionary diversity of bird communities in forested areas around Chernobyl. Species richness decreased with increasing radiation, mainly in 2007. F...

Filmmaker Ian Thomas Ash and biologist Timothy A. Mousseau have orbited one another in the courses of their fieldwork in and around Fukushima, Japan, since 2011. One traces human stories; the other tracks signs of biological change in wildlife. Both had investigated questions about the exposure of bodies to radiation. Their paths crossed at a works...

Exposure to ionizing radiation (IR) from radionuclides released into the environment can damage DNA. An expected response to exposure to environmental radionuclides, therefore, is initiation of DNA damage response (DDR) pathways. Increased DNA damage is a characteristic of many organisms exposed to radionuclides but expression of DDR genes of wildl...

In Chernobyl, chronic exposure to radioactive contaminants has a variety of deleterious effects on exposed organisms, including genetic damage and mutation accumulation. However, the potential for such effects to be transmitted to the next generation is poorly understood.We captured lesser marsh grasshoppers (Chorthippus albomarginatus) in the Cher...

The abundance and the presence of common cuckoos Cuculus canorus have been shown to pre- dict species richness of birds across Europe, while there are no such analyses available for other continents where species richness of parasitic cuckoos is larger. Here, we tested whether species richness of birds increased with the number of cuckoo species in...

Given increasing energy needs related to global development, and the spectre of climate change related to carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions from fossil fuels, there is an urgent need for large-scale energy production that does not involve the production of greenhouse gases. Nuclear energy is one possible solution that has been embraced by developing...

Premise of research. Low-dose ionizing radiation (LDIR) can generate deleterious mutations that may have significant negative impact on life-history traits. Methodology. Here we quantified the germination rate of seeds of 25 species of plants from multiple sampling locations at Chernobyl when grown under similar (controlled, nonirradiated, common...

Background Environmental pollution in general, and radioactive contamination in particular, may deeply affect host-parasite relationships and their consequences for the evolution of organisms. The nuclear accident that occurred more than 30 years ago in Chernobyl resulted in significant changes in diversity and richness of microbial communities tha...

We studied the abundance of the common cuckoo Cuculus canorus L. little cuckoo Cuculus poliocephalus L. and Asian cuckoo Cuculus saturatus L. and avian top predators as indicators of bird species richness (surrogate of biodiversity) in disturbed environments caused by radioactive contamination in Chernobyl, Ukraine and Fukushima, Japan, comparing t...

Wiregrass (Aristida beyrichiana) is a dominant groundcover species that facilitates fire in southeastern U.S.A. pine savannas, thereby limiting woody plant cover and maintaining a herbaceous dominated understory. In December 1993 two of us planted a plot of wiregrass (Aristida beyrichiana) in the midst of fire-maintained little bluestem (Schizachyr...

Radioactivity released from disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima is a global hazard and a threat to exposed biota. To minimize the deleterious effects of stressors organisms adopt various strategies. Plants, for example, may delay germination or stay dormant during stressful periods. However, an intense stress may halt germination or heavily affe...

Pollen viability is an important component of reproductive success, with inviable pollen causing failure of reproduction. Pollen grains have evolved mechanisms to avoid negative impacts of adverse environmental conditions on viability, including the ability to sustain ionizing radiation and repair DNA. We assessed the viability of 109,000 pollen gr...

An international research team has analyzed their own studies and data available from the literature concerning the biological effects of chronic or acute exposure to ionizing radiation (IR) on humans and biota as a consequence of the Chernobyl accident. Mechanisms of their effects at the cellular, body, and population levels were studied and compa...

Microorganisms have shaped the evolution of a variety of defense mechanisms against pathogenic infections. Radioactivity modifies bacterial communities and, therefore, bird hosts breeding in contaminated areas are expected to adapt to the new bacterial environment. We tested this hypothesis in populations of barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) from a g...