Vocal Activity of the Red Deer and the Acoustic Structure of Its Rutting Calls in the Russian Far East

摘要

The red deer Cervus elaphus has established as a species in Central Asia, in the Tarim Basin, approximately two million years ago and spread from this basin in two branches. The western branch went through the Caucasus and Carpathian Mountains to Western Europe, and the eastern branch passed the Tien Shan, Altai, and Siberia to eventually reach North America [1- 3]. Within the current distribution range covering the overall Holarctic, this species has many subspecies, which differ from each other notonly in their size and morphology, but also in the stag rutting calls [1, 2]. The stags of the European subspecies—Scottish C. e. scoticus [4], Corsican C. e. corsi-canus [5], and Spanish C. e. hispanicus [6, 7]—have low-frequency rutting calls. However, characteristic of the stags of Siberian and North American subspecies—Altai wapiti C. e. sibiricus [1, 8], Canadian wapiti C. e. canadensis |9], and Roosevelt elk C. e. roosevelti [10]—are high-frequency rutting calls, referred to as bugles.