Landscape Genetics in Biodiversity Conservation

Abstract

Landscape genetics -- the integration of population genetics and landscape ecology to understand how landscape features influence gene flow, genetic diversity, and population connectivity -- has emerged as a powerful framework for conservation genetics, providing spatially explicit metrics of population connectivity and isolation that can directly inform habitat corridor design and protected area network planning. This study applied landscape genetics analysis to 2,840 individual tissue samples from 42 populations of four focal species (grey wolf Canis lupus, European wildcat Felis silvestris, common frog Rana temporaria, and yellow-bellied toad Bombina variegata) across the Alps and Carpathians (2019-2022), genotyped at 20-24 microsatellite loci and 8,400 SNP loci (RADseq) to quantify genetic differentiation (FST), effective population size (Ne), and isolation by resistance (IBR) as a function of landscape resistance surfaces derived from Circuitscape modelling. Landscape resistance was the strongest predictor of pairwise FST in all four species (r = +0.74-0.84 between resistance distance and FST; p < 0.001) -- outperforming geographic distance (r = +0.48-0.64) and confirming that it is landscape permeability rather than raw geographic distance that determines genetic connectivity. Human infrastructure (motorways, urban areas) contributed 48.4% of landscape resistance for wolf and 38.4% for wildcat -- identifying roads as the primary genetic barrier for large carnivores in Central Europe. A Genetic Connectivity Conservation Index (GCCI) integrating FST, Ne, IBR, and population trend predicted local extinction risk within 10 years with AUC = 0.884 and identified 14 populations requiring immediate corridor creation or translocation to prevent genetic erosion.