Immediate and long-term genetic consequences of linear transport infrastructure: can fauna crossing mitigate its cost?

Linear infrastructure stands as one of the main culprits of anthropogenically caused biodiversity decline. As it fragments landscapes, it ultimately results in a myriad of direct and indirect ecological consequences for wildlife. As transportation networks will continue to grow under increasing human population growth, biodiversity will continue to decline making the need to understand and mitigate their impact on species an urgent need for conservation worldwide. The implementation of mitigation measures to alleviate the barrier effect produced by linear transport infrastructure on local fauna is not new, and research has shown that their effectiveness has been shown to be influenced by their design, their placement and the biology of the impacted species. Our understanding of their effectiveness in preventing the longer-term impacts of linear transport infrastructure on habitat connectivity via gene flow, however, remains poorly understood. Here, we used a pre- and post-habitat fragmentation genetic dataset collected as part of an extensive Koala Management Program to ask questions about the immediate and predicted longer-term genetic consequences of linear transport infrastructure on the impacted species. Importantly, using forward migration simulations, we show that to preserve connectivity would need to result in around 20% of the population mixing to avoid long-term genetic drift. These results have important consequences for the management of species at the forefront of linear infrastructure. In particular, the study shows the importance of considering gene flow in our assessment of the effectiveness of fauna crossings.