Genetic insights into an Apennine population of the Italian red deer

The red deer Cervus elephus has been a common species in Italy until the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when its distribu-tion range started to considerably decrease, due to gradual deforestation and hunting pressure. Afterwards, the red deer has beenreintroduced to many regions of the world, including Italy. In the Italian Apennines, the Acquerino-Cantagallo Natural Reserve(ACQUERINO) hosts one of the largest peninsular red deer populations, originated from a series of successful reintroductions.In this study, we meant to detect the level of genetic variability of Acquerino-Cantagallo Natural Reserve deer population andto investigate the genetic relationships with the other Italian and European populations. We identified five mitochondrial DNAcontrol region (D-loop) haplotypes, four falling in lineage A and one falling in lineage C, derived from at least two maternallineages, confirming that ACQUERINO population should be the result of multiple reintroductions. Haplotype diversity(H = 0.50) and nucleotide (? = 0.004) diversity were low, but included into the deer range values. ACQUERINO populationshowed low levels of genetic diversity when compared to other European and Mediterranean populations, confirming that thisexpanding population may have been generated from a low number of founders.