Red deer are large deer native to Britain. In the New Forest, males call during the autumn rut.
In Britain, the coat is rusty red in summer and brown in winter. Males shed and regrow their antlers each year.
Female red deer live in groups that join and separate. On Scotland’s Isle of Rum, the same females tended to occur in smaller groups and have weaker social connections as they grew older.
Published in 2022, the study used 46 years of observations from 1974–2019. Fieldworkers repeatedly identified deer, recorded their locations and noted which individuals were together. Focusing on females aged five and older, the researchers used more than 200,000 observations to examine yearly patterns of association.
With age, females also tended to occupy smaller ranges and shift towards places with fewer deer. Accounting for these spatial changes did not fully remove the age-related decline in group size. The authors discussed several possible explanations, including physical ageing and relationships with competitors. A female’s pattern of group living changes within her lifetime, with fewer associates in later years.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Hybridization between native red deer and introduced Japanese sika is a conservation concern in Britain. A genetic study published in 2018 found hybrids in areas including Kintyre, Scotland, while no recent sika introgression was detected with the study’s markers in the Hebridean samples. The authors recommended maintaining island refuges free of sika introgression and using much larger marker panels to detect ancestry remaining after repeated backcrossing.