Folia Zool. – 57(3): 283–293 (2008) White-tailed deer winter feeding strategy in area shared with other deer species Miloslav HOMOLKA1, Marta HEROLDOVÁ1 and Luděk BARToš2 1 Institute of Vertebrate Biology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic,v.v.i., Květná 8, CZ-603 65 Brno, Czech Republic; e-mail:
[email protected] 2 Department of Ethology, Institute of Animal Science, P.O.B. 1, CZ-104 01 Praha 10 Uhříněves, Czech Republic Received 25 January 2008, Accepted 9 June 2008 Abstract. 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.