There is no silver bullet: Tiger corridors do not ensure multispecies carnivore connectivity

Connectivity is critical to sustaining endangered carnivores in speciose yet fragmented landscapes such as in the global south. Corridors to mitigate fragmentation are designed based on charismatic species or habitat-based approaches, but their multispecies effectiveness for maintaining functional connectivity remains poorly tested. We combined landscape genetic analyses across five sympatric carnivores - Panthera tigris, Panthera pardus, Prionailurus viverrinus, Felis chaus, and Melursus ursinus, to evaluate how landscape features shape functional connectivity in a globally important felid landscape. We then assessed the efficiency of existing tiger corridors and single-species surrogates for maintaining multispecies functional connectivity. Species exhibited contrasting responses to landscape variables, producing distinct resistance surfaces and connectivity corridors. Spatial similarity of connectivity between species pairs was highly variable (r = 0.14-0.93), but no single species effectively captured connectivity patterns of the broader carnivore community (maximum mean overlap of <0.7 across species). Moreover, genetically optimized corridors were at least 70% more efficient in capturing connectivity compared to existing tiger corridors, demonstrating mismatches between structural and functional connectivity. Our results highlight limitations of surrogate-based corridor planning and demonstrate that integrating multispecies functional connectivity can substantially improve conservation planning in human-dominated landscapes.