3.6 Spatial randomization test:
During the study period (2013-2018), 173 golden jackal and 103 wolf vehicle collisions were recorded. Most golden jackal road mortalities occurred in the spring (n=63) and winter seasons (n=46), while for grey wolf most collisions occurred in summer (n=20) and winter (n=35) seasons (Table 5). We also gathered 101 and 170 additional gray wolf and golden jackal crossing locations, respectively from observation.
Table 5: Annual distribution of road mortality for the two study species Canis lupus and C. aureus, on the Markazi Province’s main and secondary roads (Iran).
We found our connectivity model very strongly predicted grey wolf (Figure 7) and golden jackal (Figure 8) highway crossing locations (Table 6). Crossings have a significantly higher connectivity score than the randomly-selected locations (P < 0.00001).
Fig 7. Spatial randomization test: the crossing location of grey wolf has a much higher connectivity score than the randomization. A solid vertical line shows the median of 101 crossing locations. Transparent bars show the distribution of the median connectivity values of 10000 random spatial samples across the road network.
Fig 8. Spatial randomization test: the crossing location of golden jackal has a much higher connectivity score than the randomization. Solid vertical line shows the median of 170 crossing locations. Transparent bars show the distribution of the median connectivity values of 10000 random spatial samples along the road network.
Table 6. Maximum, minimum, median, and average value of grey wolf and golden jackal crossing locations compare with 10000 random points.