Imperial trophy or island relict? A new extinction paradigm for Pere David's deer: a Chinese conservation icon.

ABSTRACT: Determining the 'dynamic biogeography' of range collapse in threatened species is essential for effective conservation, but reconstruction of spatio-temporal patterns of population vulnerability and resilience can require use of non-standard ecological data such as historical archives. Père David's deer or milu, one of the few living mammal species that has become extinct in the wild, is historically known only from a small captive herd of unknown provenance that survived until 1900 in the Imperial Hunting Park near Beijing, from which all living individuals are descended. Using ancient DNA analysis, we demonstrate that two fawns collected in 1868 from Hainan Island, off the southern Chinese mainland, represent the only known wild milu specimens and were sampled from probably the last wild

SUBMITTER: Turvey ST 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5666285 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature