FIGURE 2 Diurnal foraging rhythm of two species of deer Japanese yew
saplings
The monthly relative abundance index (M RAI) of
wapiti foraging demonstrated an unimodal trend of first increasing and
then decreasing, reaching its peak in February (38.5%), which was
approximately twice that of roe deer (22.8%), whereas there was no
obvious pattern for the latter as a whole (Figure 3). This indicated
that the two ungulates foraged on Japanese yew saplings seasonally. The
results demonstrated that there was a difference in the relative
multiplicity index (S RAI) of foraging between
them in the cold season (p <0.05).