The roe deer classification to ecotypes in mosaic landscape of Lithuania

The roe deer is the most numerous large wild herbivore in Europe and Lithuania. In Lithuania, roe deer population is continuously increasing and consists of more than 115000 individuals. The diverse landscape of the country causes differentiation of roe deer into two ecotypes: regular forest ecotype and field ecotype – as ecological forms adapted to specific environmental conditions. Classification of Roe deer into ecotypes was started in 1960s, unfortunately based on low scientific evidence. We have studied roe deer variation among ecotypes in morphological traits and DNA markers: skull traits, roebuck antler trophic value comparison and nuclear microsatellite polymorphism at five loci. Totally, 603 roe deer skulls and 228 roebuck antlers, also 79 individuals for the DNA study were sampled at different parts of the country. The ANOVA ad AMOVA analyses were carried for each age class and sex separately. The results showed that only few morphological skull traits at particular age classes showed significant differences among ecotypes. However, there were significant differences among ecotypes in the roebuck anther trophic value. We have not found significant genetic differences among ecotypes based on AMOVA. These findings suggest that the ecotypes are closely related owing to evolutionary recent separation from the common ancestor and geneflow among the ecotypes and have not reached the level of subspeciesVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŽemės ūkio akademij