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).