| Herbivore feeding analysis provides the theoretical basis for studies related to trophic relationships,interspecific competition,and the impact of herbivores on ecosystems.Clarifying the distribution and overlap of food resources of co-distributed ungulates is essential to understand the mechanism of the coexistence of multiple species.In northeastern China,there are few studies on the overlap of food composition and diet between the sympatric distribution of Northeastern sika deer and roe deer,and molecular scatology,as an emerging method for food analysis in recent years,has been relatively little applied in the study of ungulates’ diet.Thus,in this paper,we used high-throughput sequencing(HTS)technology to analyze the feeding plants in the winter fecal samples of both species(20 each of sika deer and roe deer)and conducted a comparative study using fecal microscopy analysis to investigate the overlap of food composition and food ecological niches between the two species.The results were as follows:1.Molecular fecal method: Sika deer foraging plant species have 56 families,84 genus,and 84 species.The preferred plant types of sika deer consisted of Quercu(39.19%),Chenopodium(9.32%),Ulmus(7.34%),Artemisia(6.25%),Corylus(6.09%),Oenothera(6.06%),Nicotiana(3.64%),Prunus(3.08%),Cirsium(2.28%),Malva(2.22%),Maackia(1.95%)and Lespedeza(1.44%).Roe deer foraging plant species have 51 families,83 genus,and 84 species.The preferred plant types of roe deer consisted of Chenopodium(26.16%),Corylus(19.94%),Quercus(18.72%),Malva(5.37%),Cirsium(3.49%),Geum(2.35%),Glehnia(2.16%),Ulmus(1.74%),Salix sp.(1.60%),Agrimonia(1.58%),Artemisia(1.54%),Amaranthus(1.40%),Urtica(1.14%)and Abutilon(1.12%).2.Roe deer had a higher food diversity index,evenness,and ecological niche width overall than sika deer.The three indices fluctuated widely among different samples,with some differences.The range of variation of the three indices of roe deer was greater than that of Northeast Muihua deer,with the range of variation of the food diversity index of roe deer being0.5 538-2.8 820(mean ± standard error 1.9 672 ± 0.1 394),the range of variation of evenness being 0.0 930-0.4 656(0.3 192 ± 0.0 223),and niche width ranged from 1.2 617-10.7 409(4.7557 ± 0.5 501).The range of variation of the food diversity index of sika deer was 0.8 181-2.3976(1.7 717 ± 0.1 048),the range of variation of evenness was 0.1 473-0.3 981(0.2 894 ± 0.0166),and the range of variation of niche width was 1.4 896-7.2 542(3.7 177 ± 0.3 529).3.Fecal microscopic analysis method: Obtained 400 fecal microscope sections with 10-13 fields of view per section,for a total of 4123 fields of view.The winter foraging plants of roe deer belonged to 19 families,22 genus,and 27 species.The central foraging plants were Corylus mandshurica,Rhamnus ussuriensis,Populus pseudosimonii,Acer tegmentosum,Tilia amurensis,Acer ukurunduense,Euonymus alatus,and Spiraea salicifolia.The winter foraging plants of sika deer are 19 families,25 genus,and 29 species.The central foraging plants are regular maple,Salix,Quercus mongolica,Euonymus alatus,Corylus mandshurica,Syringa reticulata,Vitis amurensis,Tilia amurensis.There was a high overlap of foraging plants,but there were significant differences in the proportions and ordinal positions in their respective food compositions.Regarding the proportion of foraged plants,only the genus Acer(15.86%)was browsed by the sika deer,with a proportion of 10% or more.The roe deer eat more than10% of three species of Acer 20.38%,Corylus 14.73%,and Rhamnus 11.88%,respectively.4.The results measured by the two methods differed in the number,type,and proportion of food composition.There were also significant differences in the food diversity index,evenness index,and niche width index.The molecular scatology method allowed the detection of more food species,especially herbaceous plants.The foraging proportions of deciduous trees compared to deciduous shrubs and deciduous vines were more susceptible to different feeding analysis methods. |
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