Professor William Amos

I am group leader of Mammal Evolution and Morphology.

I have a long-standing interest in the use of genetic markers to elucidate population structure and breeding behaviour, originally in marine mammals, coupled with studies on how these markers evolve. Since the 1990's I have developed the idea that heterozygous sites attract additional mutations at and around them, creating a link between evolutionary rate and population size. It was testing this hypothesis that led me to the prediction that mutation rate in humans would have dropped as a result of the large loss of variability that occurred during the out of Africa event, and thence to an alternative model to inter-breeding that could explain why non-Africans are closer to Neanderthals than Africans. Work in this area has pre-occupied me for more than a decade but challenging the idea that many humans carry Neanderthal legacies has proved near-impossible! 

Below is a document summarising many of my ideas, analyses and reasons why these legacies appear to be near-zero. To make this as self-contained and easy to share as possible, I start with a very brief bio.

A while back I was invited to present my work on Neanderthal introgression (or lack thereof) via Zoom at UCL.  

In addition to the work on the question of Neanderthal introgression, I have two large studies of natural populations. The first is the genetic analysis of mink culled in major project that aims to eradicate this invasive pest from East Anglia and, eventually, from the UK. Mink predation is the major reason behind catastrophic declines in water vole numbers but they also eat kingfishers and pretty much any other species they dispersal patterns and identify kin clusters to inform can catch along the banks of rivers where they live. My work aims to inform trapping strategies. I am also interested in fungi and particularly porcini, Boletus edulis. I have assembled a database of over 4,000 samples, often sampled from under the same trees over periods of up to 15 years. My aim is to understand how this species evolves, including adaptation to its various host trees, dispersal and competition between genets. 

I joined the Department of Zoology in 1996 from the Department of Genetics, Cambridge, where I had been joint head of the Molecular Ecology Research Group with Josephine Pemberton.