Patterns of gene flow across multiple anthropogenic infrastructures: Insights from a multi-species approach

Abstract

Large-scale Transportation Infrastructures (LTIs) are among the main determinants of landscape fragmentation, with strong impacts on animal dispersal movements and metapopulation functioning. Although the detection of LTIs impacts is now facilitated by landscape genetic tools, studies are often conducted on a single species, although different species might react differently to the same obstacle. We surveyed four species (a snake, an amphibian, a butterfly and a ground-beetle) in a landscape fragmented by six LTIs: a motorway, a railway, a country road, a gas pipeline, a power line and a secondary road network. We hypothesized that LTIs carrying vehicles would mostly impact ground-dwelling species, possibly in a cumulative way. We showed that half of the overall explained genetic variability across all species was due to LTIs. While the butterfly was seemingly not impacted by any LTI, the genetic structure of the three other species was mostly influenced by roads and motorway. The power line did not affect any species and the gas pipeline only impacted gene flow in the ground-beetle through forest fragmentation, but roads systematically affected at least two species. Interestingly, we also showed that some LTIs could somehow promote gene flow, embankments probably providing favourable habitats for vertebrate species. Considering the high variability in species response to LTIs, we argue that drawing general conclusions on landscape connectivity from the study of a single species may lead to counterproductive mitigation measures and that multi-species approaches should be more systematically considered in conservation planning.