Abstract
This study investigates a population of red deer Cervus elaphus, founded by 10 individuals introduced in the nineteenth century from Germany to the Voronezh region of the European part of Southern Russia and then developed without further introductions. We characterize for the first time the vocal phenotype of the Voronezh red deer male rutting calls in comparison with similar data on the Pannonian (native Central European) and Iberian (native West European) red deer obtained by the authors during preceding studies. In addition, we provide for the first time the genetic data on Pannonian red deer. In Voronezh stags, the number of roars per bout (2.85 ± 1.79) was lower than in Pannonian (3.18 ± 2.17) but higher than in Iberian (2.11 ± 1.71) stags. In Voronezh stags, the duration of main (the longest within bouts) roars was longer (2.46 ± 1.14 s) than in Pannonian (1.13 ± 0.50 s) or Iberian (1.90 ± 0.50 s) stags. The maximum fundamental frequency of main roars was similar between Voronezh (175 ± 60 Hz) and Pannonian (168 ± 61 Hz) but higher in Iberian stags (223 ± 35 Hz). Mitochondrial cytochrome b gene analysis of red deer from the three study populations partially supports the bioacoustical data, of closer similarity between Voronezh and Pannonian populations. In contrast, microsatellite DNA analysis delineates Voronezh red deer from either Pannonian or Iberian red deer. We discuss that population bottlenecking might affect the acoustics of the rutting roars, in addition to genotype.
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source-filter interaction (coupling). d Pannonian red deer three-roar bout of rutting calls, all three calls are common roars; the third call is the main roar of the bout. e Iberian red deer three-roar bout of rutting calls, all the three calls are common roars; the first call is the main roar of the bout. The spectrogram was created at 11,025 Hz sampling frequency, Hamming window, FFT 1024, frame 50%, overlap 93.75%
taken from the following: (1) McComb (1988); (2) Long et al. (1998); (3) Reby and McComb (2003); (4) Kidjo et al. (2008); (5) Frey et al. (2012); (6) Passilongo et al. (2013); (7) Bocci et al. (2013); (8) Volodin et al. (2015a); (9) Della Libera et al. (2015); (10) Hurtado et al. (2012); (11) Volodin et al. (2019); (12) This study. Modified after Volodin et al. (2019)
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Data availability
All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and the supplementary materials and in GenBank under respective accession numbers; alignments are available on request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the owners and the staff of red deer facilities for their help with collecting the audio and genetic data for this study. We thank Stephen Pollard and Alaina Eckert for help with correction of writing and language at the final stage of the revision of the manuscript.
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The study was supported by the RFBR grant No 19–04-00133 for the acoustic analysis (to OG, IV, and EV); by the grant “Biodiversity of Natural Systems: Biological Resources of Russia, Status Assessment and Fundamental Bases of Monitoring” Fundamental Research Program of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences (topic 52) for the genetic analysis (to OG and MK); and by the RFBR grant No 20–34-90123 for the genetic analysis (to OG and MK).
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OG, IV, and EV conceived and designed this study and analyzed the data. MK managed the genetic part of research. EL, AN, and TT performed the field study. OG, EV, and IV wrote the manuscript, with contributions from all of the authors.
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This study has been conducted in cooperation with the staff of the facilities in accordance with the rules of the facilities and in accordance with ethical and animal welfare standards and the laws of the Russian Federation, where material for the current study was collected. Animal disturbance was kept at a minimum, as the recording was conducted automatically in the absence of people. Samples from Pannonian stags were obtained from animals legally killed by hunters under observation of facility managers. The data collection protocol no. 2011–36 was approved by the Committee of Bioethics of Lomonosov Moscow State University.
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Golosova, O.S., Kholodova, M.V., Volodin, I.A. et al. Vocal phenotype of male rutting roars and genetic markers delineate East European red deer (Cervus elaphus) from Central and West European populations. Sci Nat 108, 30 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-021-01742-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-021-01742-0