Spatial replication is important for developing landscape genetic inferences for a wetland salamander
Habitat fragmentation is one of the most pressing threats to wildlife populations. Maintenance of sustained dispersal and gene flow between populations is essential and often the end goal of conservation action. Use of resistance surfaces has emerged as an important strategy for developing conservation management strategies to mitigate effects of habitat fragmentation (e.g., corridor design). However, recent studies have noted inconsistencies across study sites in the factors most strongly associated with genetic connectivity. Thus, replication of genetic-based resistance surface optimization across landscapes may be necessary for making robust and generalizable conclusions about the influence of environmental variables on gene flow and for generating comprehensive predictions that can then be used by conservation practitioners in their focal landscape. In this study, we conducted replicated landscape genetic analyses across five sampling areas in Tennessee and Kentucky for a threatened wetland-obligate salamander, the four-toed salamander (Hemidactylium scutatum). We used genomic data to quantify fine-scale population structure in each of our study landscapes. We then tested multiple hypotheses of how different landscape features (e.g., canopy cover) influenced connectivity and gene flow. We found some concordance in the landscape features that were inferred to influenced gene flow, but also some differences---potentially owing to the difference in variability of predictors at each site. Our work identifies landscape variables that may be important for H. scutatum conservation, and, our replicated design allows us to identify important relationships that would have been missed if only using only one study site.