RAPD ANALYSIS OF SYSTEMATIC RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE CERVIDAE

We investigated the possible application of RAPD (Random Amplified Pol ymorphic DNA) analysis to the study of the systematic relationships of five cervid taxa. Amplifications with eight different primers gave re producible electrophoretic patterns which could be regarded as a data- set consisting of monomorphic and polymorphic characters. Some of thes e characters are species- and subspecies-specific. Band-sharing analys is and numerical taxonomy methods allowed us to generate a phenetic tr ee. Our results point out new possible systematic considerations withi n the examined taxa.