Linking habitats for multiple species

The establishment of linkages between habitats is of great importance to avert the detrimental impacts of land fragmentation and climate change on biodiversity. Linkages need to be cost-efficient, and should account for specific dispersal requirements of species. Since cost-efficient linkages defined independently for each individual species are more costly than linkages optimised for multiple species, there is need for methods specifically designed to retrieve efficient linkages for multiple species. MulTyLink (Multiple Type Linkages) is a Cþþ open source program that defines cost-efficient linkages free of barriers for the species considered, and that allows species-specific dispersal requirements to be considered. Here we present, discuss and illustrate the algorithms used by MulTyLink to identify costefficient linkages for multiple species. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Software availability Name of the software: MulTyLink e Multiple Type Linkages Developers: Raul Brás, J. Orestes Cerdeira, Diogo Alagador Contact address: Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, Technical University of Lisbon (TULisbon), Rua do Quelhas 6, 1200-781 Lisbon, Portugal Email: [email protected] Supported systems: Windows OS, Linux, Macintosh Programming language: Cþþ and Qt libraries Available since: October, 2011 Availability: Free download with supporting material at http://purl. oclc.org/multylink License: GPL v3 (CEF), Instituto Superior de , Tapada da Ajuda 1, 1349-017 [email protected] (J.O. Cerdeira),