Data from: Modelling the dispersal of the two main hosts of the raccoon rabies variant in heterogeneous environments with landscape genetics

Predicting the geographic spread of wildlife epidemics requires knowledge
about the movement patterns of disease hosts or vectors. The field of
landscape genetics provides valuable approaches to study dispersal
indirectly, which in turn may be used to understand patterns of disease
spread. Here, we applied landscape genetic analyses and spatially explicit
models to identify the potential path of raccoon rabies spread in a
mesocarnivore community. We used relatedness estimates derived from
microsatellite genotypes of raccoons and striped skunks to investigate
their dispersal patterns in a heterogeneous landscape composed
predominantly of agricultural, forested and residential areas. Samples
were collected in an area covering 22 000 km2 in southern Québec, where
the raccoon rabies variant (RRV) was first detected in 2006. Multiple
regressions on distance matrices revealed that genetic distance among male
raccoons was strictly a function of geographic distance, while dispersal
in female raccoons was significantly reduced by the presence of
agricultural fields. In skunks, our results suggested that dispersal is
increased in edge habitats between fields and forest fragments in both
males and females. Resistance modelling allowed us to identify likely
dispersal corridors used by these two rabies hosts, which may prove
especially helpful for surveillance and control (e.g. oral vaccination)
activities.