White-tailed deer winter feeding strategy in area shared with other deer species

Title:

White-tailed deer winter feeding strategy in area shared with other deer species

Creator:

Homolka, Miloslav, Heroldová, Marta, and Bartoš, Luděk

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:8be5efe9-b326-40a0-9c68-67f06f20783a
uuid:8be5efe9-b326-40a0-9c68-67f06f20783a

Subject:

Capreolus capreolus, Cervus elaphus, Czech Republic, Dama dama, diet analysis, fallow deer, Odocoileus virginianus, red deer, and roe deer

Type:

article and TEXT

Description:

White-tailed deer were introduced into the Czech Republic about one hundred years ago. Population numbers have remained stable at low density despite almost no harvesting. This differs from other introductions of this species in Europe. We presumed that one of the possible factors preventing expansion of the white-tailed deer population is lack of high-quality food components in an area overpopulated by sympatric roe, fallow and red deer. We analyzed the WTD winter diet and diets of the other deer species to get information on their feeding strategy during a critical period of a year. We focused primarily on conifer needle consumption, a generally accepted indicator of starvation and on bramble leaves as an indicator of high-quality items. We tested the following hypotheses: (1) If the environment has a limited food supply, the poorest competitors of the four deer species will have the highest proportion of conifer needles in the diet ; (2) the deer will overlap in trophic niches and will share limited nutritious resource (bramble). White-tailed, roe, fallow, and red deer diets were investigated by microscopic analysis of plant remains in their faeces. The volume of bramble decreased in the diet of all four deer species from November to March. The content of conifer needles in the diet of white-tailed and roe deer was negatively correlated with bramble and in spring made up 90 % of their diet volume. On the other hand conifer needles in the diet of red and fallow deer occurred only in January with snow cover. Fallow and red deer started the compensation of winter starvation at least one monthearlier than both roe and white-tailed deer. a high content of conifers in white-tailed deer diet in the second half of the winter fully support the presumption about low nutritional food supply and its diet. It can lead to a markedly impaired condition for white-tailed and roe deer and negatively affect their condition. The dietary overlap of four sympatric deer species was extensive in winter. All species share a limited good quality food supply (bramble) when food is scarce, suggesting that interspecific competition may occur.

Language:

English

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Source:

Folia zoologica | 2008 Volume:57 | Number:3

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false