Do all roads lead to resistance? State road density is the main impediment to gene flow in a flagship species inhabiting a severely fragmented anthropogenic landscape

The wildcat population in Germany is currently estimated between 6,000 and 15,000 individuals, and the European wildcat serves as an umbrella species due to its diverse habitat demands. Our study took place in the core range of the European wildcat in Germany, covering an area of ca. 186.000 km², and we used genotypes of 975 pure-bred wildcat individuals. Data were largely based on non-invasively sampled hair, but also included tissue, saliva, faeces and blood samples from different studies. We used pairwise genetic, geografic as well as effective distances of various landscape variables in different representations to determine effects of landscape variables on genetic distances.