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).