Beyond roadkill, radiotracking, recapture and Fst-a review of some genetic methods to improve understanding of the influence of roads on wildlife

Abstract

Habitat fragmentation continues to occur despite increasing evidence of its adverse effects on ecosystems. One of the major detrimental effects of roads and traffic is the creation of barriers or filters to the movement of wildlife, ultimately disconnecting some populations. Our understanding of the extent to which roads reduce the movement of biota is mostly based on field-based observational methods of inferring animal movement, and to a much smaller extent, on allele frequency-based genetic analyses. Field-based methods, as it is typically feasible to apply them, tend to be informative at fine temporal and spatial scales. Allele frequency-based genetic methods are informative at broad geo..