Deer phylogeny published

In September our paper was published to ZooKeys on the taxonomy of American deer, a group some may mistakenly have thought was well understood. I participated in this project with Eliécer Gutiérrez among others while at the Smithsonian Institution. While there are many important findings in this paper, one of the most notable was that the taxonomy of deer has historically been almost exclusively based on morphological characters, which when compared with DNA sequencing resulted in highly different results. This just goes to show you even animals like white-tailed deer are not as well understood as we think! Check out the article here: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.697.15124 

Photo by Lee Fisher courtesy of Detroit Zoological Society.

Included in the deer phylogeny is the genus Pudu, the smallest deer in the world. Check out this adorable picture from the Detroit Zoo!