Impacts of landscape fragmentation on red deer (Cervus elaphus) and European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris): a nation-wide landscape genetic analysis

Medientyp: E-Book; Hochschulschrift

Titel: Impacts of landscape fragmentation on red deer (Cervus elaphus) and European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris): a nation-wide landscape genetic analysis

Beteiligte: Westekemper, Katharina Sophie [VerfasserIn]; Balkenhol, Niko [AkademischeR BetreuerIn]; Roos, Christian [AkademischeR BetreuerIn]; Gailing, Oliver [AkademischeR BetreuerIn]

Erschienen: Göttingen, 2022

Umfang: 1 Online-Ressource; Illustrationen, Diagramme

Sprache: Englisch

Identifikator:

Schlagwörter: European wildcat, fragmentation, functional connectivity, gene flow, habitat loss, landscape genetics, Red deer, landscape resistance, wildlife connectivity, Wildlife Sciences ; Hochschulschrift

Entstehung:

Hochschulschrift: Dissertation, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 2022

Anmerkungen:

Beschreibung: Weltweit ist die Artenvielfalt durch die Fragmentierung der Landschaft und den Verlust von Lebensräumen bedroht. Die Folgen dieser beiden Prozesse sind vielfältig und können durch mangelnde Konnektivität und fehlenden genetischen Austausch zum Verlust von Ökosystemfunktionen und zum Aussterben von Arten oder Populationen führen. Besonders in menschlich geprägten Landschaften ist eine intakte funktionale Konnektivität zwischen Populationen notwendig, um die Auswirkungen der Lebensraumfragmentierung zu verringern. Gleichzeitig müssen Ausbreitungsbewegungen und der Genfluss aufrechterhalten we...

All around the globe, species biodiversity is threatened by landscape fragmentation and habitat loss. The consequences of these two processes are manifold and they can result in loss of ecosystem functions and extinction of species or populations due to a lack of connectivity and genetic exchange. Especially in human-dominated landscapes, intact functional connectivity between populations is necessary to decrease impacts of habitat fragmentation and to maintain dispersal movements and gene flow ensuring viable species. To mitigate the effects of fragmentation, wildlife conservation often re...

All around the globe, species biodiversity is threatened by landscape fragmentation and habitat loss. The consequences of these two processes are manifold and they can result in loss of ecosystem functions and extinction of species or populations due to a lack of connectivity and genetic exchange. Especially in human-dominated landscapes, intact functional connectivity between populations is necessary to decrease impacts of habitat fragmentation and to maintain dispersal movements and gene flow ensuring viable species. To mitigate the effects of fragmentation, wildlife conservation often relies on corridor models to increase the permeability of landscapes.However, knowledge about the environmental impacts on gene flow and connectivity of species is often lacking on a large scale, and data used to estimate corridor models often do not capture effective dispersal because they rely on expert knowledge, movement data, or habitat models. Taking effective dispersal into account, landscape genetic analyses combine genetic data, information on landscape heterogeneity, and spatial statistics to reveal the effects of landscape elements on gene flow. In addition, models derived from landscape genetic analyses can be used to estimate informed corridor networks.This thesis investigates the effects of environmental variables on gene flow and migration of two contrasting species across Germany. Using red deer (Cervus elaphus) and European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris) as study species, the impeding effects of human infrastructure and current species management are demonstrated. Comparing genetically derived corridor models with already existing corridor models for both species, similarities and differences are presented. After a general introduction into the research context, Chapter 1 examines the effect of several environmental variables on the genetic diversity of European wildcat in its German core distribution area using high-resolution genetic data and multiple regression on distance matrices in combination with commonality analysis. The results document the importance of a combination of landscape variables for large-scale wildcat connectivity and highlight the large negative effects of anthropogenic infrastructure on wildcat connectivity, and in particular of state road densities, but also the positive effects of forest and agricultural land. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the genetic variability of red deer populations in Germany and deals with the impacts of environmental variables on historic and recent gene flow among this highly managed herbivore using uni- and multivariate optimization procedures. The results confirm the results of the first chapter and emphasize the negative effects of roads and settlements, but also reflect the negative impact of current management practices regulating red deer occurrence on gene flow and genetic structure. The study described in Chapter 3 evaluates the proposed current flow for European wildcat and red deer within available conservation corridor networks and compares corridors created using circuit theory and least-cost paths to the already available Wildcat Routing Map and the Corridor Network for Forest-Inhabiting Larger Mammals. While the results indicate that available corridors for wildcat favor its recolonization, corridors seem unavailable to red deer in managed populations. In addition, the chapter highlights the large overlap between available and landscape genetic corridors and provides recommendations for their improvement to support functional connectivity.The general discussion summarizes the findings of the chapters and discusses them in light of current research. The results of this thesis can help to understand connectivity in fragmented landscapes and, thus, contribute to the conservation of two valuable species threatened by anthropogenic land-use and fragmentation.$yLinzenz

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