Population Genetic Diversity of Roe Deer (Capreolus pygargus) in Mountains of Heilongjiang Province

The roe deer is an animal of economic importance in China and a primary food source of the Amur tiger. Understanding the morphological and molecular variation of geographically isolated roe deer populations is therefore important in establishing conservation strategies. Thirty two samples from three differences geographic regions were sequenced and the populations analysed. Twenty seven haplotypes were identified from 32 sequences of the 460 bp D-loop of mtDNA genome. Fifty sites were found to be polymorphic. The population genetic diversity of roe deer was of higher level as indicated by the following parameters: mean value of haplotype diversity (h =0.9780) and mean value of nucleotide diversity (π = 0.02260). Neither the estimate of Tajima’s D nor that of Fu & Li's D deviated significantly from the neutral selection hypothesis (P>0.1) for the three populations. The result suggests no evidence of strong selective sweeps or balancing selection. Of the three populations, the Great Khinghan Mountains geographic region was shown to have the most nucleotide diversity. To ensure conservation of genetic diversity within this population, we propose a high priority conservation classification.