STARKVILLE — Scientists are studying the DNA of deer to gauge the success of restocking efforts a century ago in Southeastern states.
Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi wildlife agencies are paying for the research being conducted at the Deer Laboratory at Mississippi State University.
Steve Demarais, a wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture professor at MSU’s Forest and Wildlife Research Center, collected more than 1,000 genetic samples from deer throughout the United States. He’s trying to determine whether Northern deer that were moved into the South survived long enough to pass along their traits, the university said in a news release.
“There is a biological need to genetically differentiate deer throughout the country,” Demarais said.
Stocking took place in the early 1900s, when deer were scarce in the Southeast because of habitat loss and unregulated hunting.
State agencies at the time obtained deer from around the Southeast and from as far away as Michigan and Mexico, releasing them in the region. Deer are now plentiful in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
“These deer are genetically robust and have not suffered any problems often associated with restoration efforts,” said graduate student Jordan Youngmann, who is working with Demarais.
The research could determine whether there’s any truth to the common perception that larger deer in specific parts of the Southeast have northern lineages. It also will allow scientists to examine the genetic structure of a successfully restored population. This will provide information for other species restoration efforts, Youngmann said.
“One of the things we want to answer is how well deer from the North did when they were transplanted down South,” Youngmann said. “We suspect that Northern deer, due to climate differences and disease, did not do as well as other stock sources.”
To generate a genetic picture of Southeastern deer herds, Demarais and Youngmann collected genetic samples from deer in Southeastern states and from places such as New York, Michigan and Texas. They are analyzing the DNA and comparing it to see if they can find markers that geographically distinguish the deer.
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