Research overview: habitat fragmentation, connectivity and felid disease dynamics

Habitat fragmentation reshapes felid disease by altering population connectivity, density and contact with domestic animals. This overview surveys how fragmentation influences disease in wild cats, including the concentration of animals in remnant habitat, the increased edge contact with domestic reservoirs, and the conflicting effects of connectivity, which can both rescue populations genetically and spread pathogens. It examines cases where fragmentation heightened disease risk and the management tension between linking populations and limiting transmission. The synthesis connects landscape ecology to epidemiology. It aims to help readers understand that the spatial structure of felid populations, increasingly determined by human-driven fragmentation, is a key factor in disease dynamics, influencing how pathogens spread, how exposed cats are to domestic sources, and how outbreaks play out across fragmented landscapes.