Lack of biochemical polymorphism in British fallow deer

Low biochemical variability in European fallow deer (dama dama L.): natural bottlenecks and the effects of domestication

“…Electrophoretic variation was observed at a single protein zone, in the slow a-macroglobulin region, not interpretable as a genetic polymorphism, a conclusion in agreement with Pemberton and Smith's (1985) report. Five zones of esterase activity (a-naphtyl-acetate staining) were clearly resolved working with a Tris- Table 1 Loci studied in an Italian population of fallow deer borate pH 89 buffer (McLellan et al, 1981).…”

“…When the dominant mating system of a population is by lekking, divergence of morphological and behavioural characters between subpopulations is observed in ungulates (Buechner and Roth, 1974). Consequently, the very low (if any) level of biochemical polymorphism electrophoretic studies detected in several British populations (Pemberton and Smith, 1985) and in a German one (Hartl et a!., 1986) was somewhat unexpected.…”

“…Start-ing from the surviving Mid Eastern (probably Turkish) wild populations, the progeny of tamed animals was later reintroduced in Europe (by the Phoenicians and the Romans) and in Britain (by the Normans) (Haltenorth, 1959). Founding and spreading of free-ranging and wild-living populations occurred during historical times, particularly in regions with temperate climate, although the present world population is not so large as many other wild or introduced Cervidae populations (Pemberton and Smith, 1985).…”

Biochemical variation in roe deer (Capreolus capreolus L.): are r-strategists among deer genetically less variable than K-strategists?

“…If a population bottleneck is followed by rapid population growth (as it is the case in rstrategists) not too many of the high frequency polymorphisms will be lost (Nei et a!., 1975), but there will still arise considerable allele frequency differences between populations resulting in comparatively high GST-values. On the other hand no fertility problems were described in fallow deer, a species exhibiting very low levels of biochemical variation (Pemberton and Smith, 1985;. Besides the explanation that most deleterious genes may have been lost together with the biochemical genetic variation there could be also a lower association between enzyme heterozygosity and fertility among K-strategist species.…”

“…Various multilocus investigations have been carried out within the past decade to evaluate the amount of genetic diversity within and among populations of white-tailed deer (Manlove et a!., 1976;Ramsey et a!., 1979;Baccus et a!., 1983;Smith et al, 1984Smith et al, , 1986Sheffield et a!., 1985), fallow deer (Pemberton and Smith, 1985;Harti et a!., 1986), wild and semi-domestic reindeer (RØed, 1985a, b;, moose (Ryman et a!., 1977(Ryman et a!., , 1980 and different subspecies of red deer (Cameron and Vyse, 1978;Gyllensten et a!., 1983;Baccus et a!., 1983;Dratch and Gyllensten, 1985;Hart!, 1986). In contrast the level of genetic variability in roe deer (Capreolus capreolus L.), one of the most abundant species in Central Europe, is largely unknown.…”