## 4 Discussion  
Red foxes in Norway and Sweden exhibited limited differences in genetic diversity. The pairwise comparison of genetic differentiation (\(F_{\text{ST}}\)) indicated that all study areas exhibited low to moderate differences in genetic distance from each other, except for the two Norwegian study areas. Similar results were found by [PERSON] et al. [7] in their study of the red fox in Fennoscandia, where low to moderate \(F_{\text{ST}}\) values were found, indicating high degrees of gene flow across Fennoscandia. The neighbor-joining tree separated the two Swedish study areas from each other and from the Norwegian study areas, but the two Norwegian study areas were grouped close to each other, though with limited bootstrap support. Analyses for the population genetic structure in the Norwegian and Swedish red foxes suggested limited genetic structuring, with high amounts of mixing between localities. The initial STRUCTURE analysis suggested that the four study areas consisted of two separate clusters, with Sweden South clustering separately from the remainder of the locations. [PERSON], on the other hand, suggested only one cluster. Our results of limited genetic differentiation and population genetic structure is therefore in line with previous studies that indicated limited genetic structure in red fox populations (e.g., References [52; 53]). Several studies have investigated population genetic structure in wild red fox populations, though only a handful of studies revealed signs of a strong genetic structuring (e.g., References [54; 55]). This is most likely due to the red fox's ability to traverse long distances, and thereby exhibit a high degree of gene flow [7]. However, [PERSON] et al. [54] found that the red fox in the Mediterranean basin were of two distinct clusters. This distinct clustering was allocated to the presence of two putatively different colonization waves during quaternary glaciation. [PERSON] et al. [55] found evidence of four population genetic clusters in Israeli red foxes using microsatellite markers. Here, the genetic structuring was attributed to anthropogenic limits to connectivity. Likewise, [PERSON] et al. [56], using microsatellite  
Figure 3: Population genetic results of contemporary gene flow (<2 generations back; BAYESFST) between the Norwegian and Swedish red fox study areas analyzed for 24 microsatellites. The directionality and rates of gene flow is given with thick lines being significant estimates larger than 0. The standard errors are given in parentheses. markers, observed weak population genetic differentiation in red foxes in the city of Zurich, Switzerland, which was attributed to a local river barrier. [PERSON], et al. [52], however, detected some signals of isolation by distance in their study of phylogeographic patterns using mtDNA markers, but they did not find any evidence of a phylogeographic structure of the red fox in Europe. Likewise, [PERSON] et al. [57], in their study using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers, did not detect any genetic clustering in a rural red fox population in France, most likely due to high levels of gene flow. Population genetic structuring was not detected in six areas in northeastern Poland using microsatellite markers. Here, [PERSON] et al. [58] concluded that genetic differentiation among red fox populations in their study was low due to a high connectivity and gene flow. [PERSON] et al. [7] identified genetic differentiation among red foxes from southern, western, and northern areas of Fennoscandia, and the foxes exhibited a high connectivity and asymmetric migration rates. The authors [7] also revealed that the historical genetic differentiation was much stronger than the contemporary differentiation, which indicates that gene flow has increased in the Fennoscandian red fox population. Our results agree with the previous study in that red fox exhibited a high degree of genetic diversity and gene flow due to a large dispersal ability.