Analysing landscape effects on dispersal networks and gene flow with genetic graphs

Graph-theoretic approaches have relevant applications in landscape genetic analyses. When species form populations in discrete habitat patches, genetic graphs can be used i) to identify direct dispersal paths followed by propagules or ii) to quantify landscape effects on multigenerational gene flow. However, the influence of their construction parameters remains to be explored. Using a simulation approach, we constructed genetic graphs using several pruning methods (geographical distance thresholds, topological constraints, statistical inference) and genetic distances to weight graph links (FST, DPS, Euclidean genetic distances). We then compared the capacity of these different graphs to i) identify the precise topology of the dispersal network and ii) to infer landscape resistance to gene flow from the relationship between cost-distances and genetic distances. Although not always clear-cut, our results showed that methods based on geographical distance thresholds seem to better identif...