UC Berkeley

Identifying barriers of species and characterize their effects on spatial distribution provide essential information to research in landscape genetics. We propose a weighted difference barrier (WDB) method as an alternative to maximum difference barriers (MDB), and to initiate and integrate more spatial modeling and methods into the problem solving process. Overall, WDB provides quick and straightforward improvements to the drawbacks of MDB. WDB integrates more sample location relationships into the barrier construction and reveals potential barriers that would otherwise go undetected. WDB incorporates both within group and between group genetic information, and delineates the barriers as a more complex pattern.