Environmental resistance and habitat quality influence dispersal of the saltwater crocodile.

ABSTRACT: Landscape genetics commonly focuses on the effects of environmental resistance on animal dispersal patterns, but there is an emerging focus on testing environmental effects on emigration and settlement choices. In this study, we used landscape genetics approaches to quantify dispersal patterns in the world's largest crocodilian, the saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), and demonstrated environmental influences on three processes that comprise dispersal: emigration, movement and settlement. We found that both environmental resistance and properties of the source and destination catchments (proportion of breeding habitat) were important factors influencing observed dispersal events. Our habitat quality variables related to hypotheses about resource competition and represented the ratio

SUBMITTER: Fukuda Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9299799 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature