Table 1.
Landscape influences on cottontail gene flow.
Landscape features evaluated in this study along with their hypothesized and empirically identified (from univariate least cost path models) influence on New England cottontail gene flow. Plus signs indicate postive relationship, minus signs indicate negative relationship.
Table 2.
Study area composition and configuration.
Characteristics of occupied patches and proportion of each study area comprised by specific landcover types. Road and LiDAR percentages indicate the overall proportion of landscape that they cover and their coverage overlaps with that of other landcover types.
Fig 1.
Study area in Maine/New Hampshire (USA).
Top left two insets provide context for study area location in North America within the states of Maine and New Hampshire. Bottom left panel shows the full extent of the study area. I-95 is shown by solid black line partitioning east and west sides of the Kittery region. The Piscataqua River is visible in the southern portion of Kittery. Close ups of the two study study areas with landcover are shown in the top right for Cape Elizabeth and bottom right for Kittery. Locations of sampled New England cottontail individuals are shown by black points. Landcover key: gray = development, green = forest, orange = fields, yellow = scrub/shrub, dark blue = open water, and light blue = wetlands.
Table 3.
Univariate landscape model results.
Model selection results for univariate linear mixed effects models of the relationship of landscape features on individual genetic distance, measured by Rousset’s a, for New England cottontails in the Kittery and Cape Elizabeth study areas. AICc is the second order or sample size corrected Akaike information criterion, delta AICc is the difference in AICc of each competing model relative to the best model, and AICcWt is the probability that the model is the best fit.
Table 4.
Multivariate landscape model results.
Model selection results for multivariate linear mixed effects models of the relationship of landscape features on individual genetic distance, measured by Rousset’s a, for New England cottontails in the Kittery and Cape Elizabeth study areas. AICc is the second order or sample size corrected Akaike information criterion, delta AICc is the difference in AICc of each competing model relative to the best model, and AICcWt is the probability that the model is the best fit.
Fig 2.
Connectivity corridors for cottontails.
Circuit analysis overlayed with least cost analysis (black lines) of New England cottontail gene flow across the Maine-New Hampshire study area. Areas in red indicate high current flow/high probability of movement while green/blue areas indicate low probability of movement.