Research overview: bobcat genetics and disease in fragmented urban landscapes

Bobcats living in fragmented urban edges, such as those around Los Angeles, illustrate how roads and development structure carnivore populations even for adaptable mesopredators. This overview surveys research on bobcat genetic differentiation across freeways, the role of connectivity barriers, and the interaction with disease, including a notable mange epizootic linked to anticoagulant rodenticide exposure. It reviews how urban bobcats serve as a tractable model for fragmentation effects that also bear on larger, rarer cats. The synthesis frames bobcats as sentinels of habitat fragmentation and urban toxicant exposure, showing how human landscapes affect wild cats through intertwined pathways of isolation, genetics, and contaminant-mediated disease.