Multiple paternity in single litters (siring of offspring by .1 male) has been documented in several taxa with different mating systems. However, information on occurrence of multiple paternity in ungulates is lacking. We used 19 DNA microsatellite markers to assign parentage in 41 litters of captive white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) born in 6 pens with multiple males during 1997–1999....

Previous surveys of wild ungulates indicate that the liver fluke, Dicrocoelium dendriticum, was rare in the Cypress Hills area of southeastern Alberta. However, 41 of 59 wapiti (Cervus elaphus) sampled during the 2003 and 2004 hunting seasons from this region were infected, with 7 hosts containing >1,000 worms. Prevalence and mean intensity were similarly high in sympatric beef cattle and mule ...

Our previous studies indicated that a cocktail of pyrazine analogs, identified in wolf urine, induced avoidance and fear behaviors in mice. The effects of the pyrazine cocktail on Hokkaido deer (Cervus nippon yesoensis) were investigated in field bioassays at a deer park in Hokkaido, Japan. A set of feeding bioassay trials tested the effects of the pyrazine cocktail odor on the behavior of the ...

As part of an ongoing effort to understand the biological response of wild and domestic ungulates to different environmental pollutants such as dioxin-like compounds, cDNAs encoding for CYP1A1 and CYP1A2 were cloned and characterized. Four novel CYP1A cDNA fragments from the livers of four wild ungulates (elephant, hippopotamus, tapir and deer) were identified. Three fragments from hippopotamus...

This study uses data from repeatedly measured forest monitoring plots (20 × 20 m) (n = 32) and nine ungulate exclosures (paired fenced and unfenced plots; 20 × 20 m) to show the effects of introduced ungulates on tree regeneration in Pureora Forest Park, central North Island, between 1974 and 2002. Results show that introduced ungulates, particularly red deer (Cervus elaphus scoticus), have sup...

The seasonality of human occupations in archaeological sites is highly significant for the study of hominin behavioural ecology, in particular the hunting strategies for their main prey-ungulates. We propose a new tool to quantify such seasonality from tooth microwear patterns in a dataset of ten large samples of extant ungulates resulting from well-known mass mortality events. The tool is base...

New Zealand has a similar history of logging, followed by the plough or fire, or similar disturbances. In addition, since all the ungulates have been introduced in a short time, biologically speaking, the native plants are generally ill-adapted to maintain themselves under heavy browsing pressure. An inevitable imbalance between animal numbers and the amount of available food has resulted. The ...