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An ecologist who investigated how deer browsing changes habitat suitability for breeding common nightingales, using paired exclusion and browsed plots.^[ref]

The common nightingale, Luscinia megarhynchos, is a songbird associated with dense low vegetation in its breeding habitat. Its familiar song and its habitat requirements provide different ways to study the same organism: vocal behaviour concerns communication, while settlement and movement reveal responses to vegetation structure.

A woodland experiment created eight paired areas in which deer were either excluded or allowed to browse. Territory mapping and radio tracking showed strong nightingale use of the protected regrowth. ^[ref] Tracked birds spent 69% of their time in the protected 6% of the study area. This links browsing to habitat use through an intervention, rather than inferring the mechanism solely from parallel population trends.

Deer are mammals of the family Cervidae. They include species with bony antlers that are shed and regrown, and their browsing can strongly influence vegetation. Family membership, external appearance and the ancestry of an individual are related but different kinds of information.

A genetic study of red and introduced sika deer in Scotland combined microsatellite markers with mitochondrial DNA. Two broadly distinct genetic groups persisted, yet introgressed alleles were detected where their distributions overlapped. ^[ref] Thus recognizable groups can exchange some genes without becoming immediately indistinguishable. Appearance alone need not reveal every episode of ancestry across a hybrid zone.

The deer lineage including Dama dama, with a long history of human translocation.

The extinct deer Megaloceros giganteus, also called the Irish elk despite its wider geographical distribution. ^[ref]

A hybrid zone is a region where genetically differentiated populations meet and produce offspring through interbreeding. Its spatial pattern reflects gene flow, dispersal and possible differences in biological fitness. A narrow transition can persist despite interbreeding; observing hybrids does not by itself show that the parental populations will merge completely.

In a Scottish contact zone between red deer and introduced sika deer, microsatellite genetic markers and the mitochondrial genome revealed introgression within populations that still formed two distinguishable genetic groups. Rare interbreeding can therefore leave a broader inherited signal than inspection of external appearance suggests.^[ref] Comparing multiple genetic markers helps distinguish contemporary interbreeding from ancestry accumulated across generations.

A deer of the genus Muntiacus, some populations of which occur outside their native range through human introductions.

Peromyscus is a genus of primarily New World rodents, including animals commonly called deer mice. It is distinct from the genus of the house mouse and has become useful for studying variation in ecology, behaviour and reproduction among related species.

Crosses between two Peromyscus species produced growth differences depending on which species supplied the mother and father. Analysis found disruption of genomic imprinting in the hybrids, while imprinting remained present in the tested parental species. ^[ref] The result distinguishes a hybrid regulatory mismatch from complete absence of the mechanism in one parent. Swapping the direction of a cross can expose parent-of-origin effects hidden by a single pooled hybrid category.

Ruminantia is the mammalian group of ruminants, including goats, sheep and deer. Regurgitation and rechewing interact with microbial foregut fermentation. Digestive function therefore depends on both the host’s anatomy and associated microorganisms.