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Roe Deer in Similar Scottish Habitats Had More Similar Diets

Male European roe deer looking toward the camera in Scotland
Research · Ecology

A preprint posted on 4 September 2026 linked the diets of European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) to the surrounding habitat across six forest landscapes in Scotland. Researchers used DNA metabarcoding on rumen contents, identifying plant DNA sequences and matching them to plant groups to reconstruct what each deer had eaten. They then compared these diets with land-cover maps derived from remote sensing around the cull locations.

The study characterised diets from 198 roe deer sampled at Abernethy, Glenfeshie, Glen Finglas, Trossachs Forests, Craik and Glentress. Habitat information around cull locations was available for 190 individuals. Site identity explained about 18% of variation in diet composition, nearly twice the roughly 10% attributed to season. In biological terms, where a deer lived was a stronger predictor of what it ate than the season alone, although most dietary variation was still left unexplained by those two factors.

Localities with more similar habitat composition also supported more similar roe deer diets, with the relationship strongest in winter and summer. Woodland habitats tended to be associated with greater representation of particular plant genera in the diet, while open and wet habitats more often showed the opposite pattern. The authors note that the remaining dietary variation is likely to reflect factors such as individual selectivity, forage quality and fine-scale vegetation structure.

One practical example involved winter browsing on commercially valuable conifers: greater amounts of riverine and fen scrub around a locality were associated with less conifer browsing. The authors conclude that combining land-cover maps with molecular diet data can help anticipate where browsing pressure is likely to concentrate across forest landscapes.

Sources and image credit

  1. Hirst, C., Shaw, D. J., Putman, R. J., Glendinning, L., Gill, R., Ennos, R. A., McLachlan, G., & Ogden, R. (2026). From pixels to plants: linking remotely sensed habitat data to roe deer diet from DNA metabarcoding in Scottish forest landscapes. EcoEvoRxiv. https://doi.org/10.32942/X29M44Primary preprint posted 4 September 2026 under CC BY 4.0. Diets of 198 roe deer from six Scottish sites were characterised with DNA metabarcoding; remotely sensed habitat data were available around cull locations for 190 individuals.

Image: caroline legg / Wikimedia Commons — male European roe deer in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, 20 July 2020. Representative image for this story; not presented as an animal or scene from the reported study or event. · CC BY 2.0 · Source

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