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Fallow Deer and Mouflon Shared 69% of Plant Genera in Their Æbelø Diets

Male European fallow deer feeding on vegetation
Research · Ecology

European fallow deer (Dama dama) and mouflon (Ovis gmelini musimon) on the Danish island Æbelø had strongly overlapping diets: 69% of the plant genera detected across the two herbivores were shared between them. This percentage describes overlap in the list of plant genera eaten, not the proportion of food biomass that was identical. DNA metabarcoding identified 83 plant genera in fallow deer diets and 86 in mouflon diets.

Researchers collected faecal samples over 11 months from April 2023 to March 2024 and analysed 191 fallow deer samples and 100 mouflon samples. DNA metabarcoding amplifies short plant-DNA markers remaining in faeces and compares them with reference sequences, allowing researchers to identify which plant taxa have been eaten even when recognizable plant fragments are no longer present. Both species shared a core diet dominated by graminoids. Their diets became more diverse in summer, when woody plants and forbs were detected more frequently, while plant-genus richness was lower in winter.

Comparing the dietary DNA data with vegetation surveys showed that both herbivores fed selectively rather than simply consuming plants in proportion to their availability. In practical terms, plants detected disproportionately often in faecal samples relative to how commonly they occurred in the vegetation were interpreted as being selected more strongly, while under-represented plants appeared to be avoided or used less. Soft grasses, woody plants and several forbs were disproportionately represented in the diets, whereas some coarse graminoids were consumed less than their availability would suggest.

The authors conclude that the combined foraging patterns of fallow deer and mouflon are likely to suppress tree regeneration on Æbelø and favour a shift toward grassland dominated by coarse graminoids, which runs counter to the island’s current restoration goals. The sequencing data show which plant genera occurred in the diet and how often they were detected, but do not directly measure the biomass of each plant consumed. They suggest that a more active management strategy could therefore be considered instead of the present minimum-intervention approach.

Sources and image credit

  1. Lankes, H. F. N., Nabe-Nielsen, L. I., Bohmann, K., Bodawatta, K. H., & Heilmann-Clausen, J. (2026). Selective seasonal foraging behavior of herbivores on a Danish island demonstrated by DNA metabarcoding. Restoration Ecology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.70432Primary research article. The study sampled fallow deer and mouflon on Æbelø, Denmark, across 11 months and analysed 191 fallow deer and 100 mouflon faecal samples. Both species fed on 69% of detected plant genera, shared a graminoid-dominated core diet and showed selective foraging relative to vegetation availability.

Image: Michael Palmer / Wikimedia Commons — male European fallow deer (Dama dama) feeding in sunlight, photographed 16 April 2014; representative species image, not an Æbelø study animal; cropped to 16:9 · CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ · Source

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