Red deer females collect on male clumps at mating areas

Mating strategies in mammalian herbivores are adapted to the dispersion of females, and female dispersion is mainly determined by resource dispersion, although it is frequently unclear whether females may also be influenced b y the location of males. In the red deer (Cervus elaphus) the distribution of females before the rut predicts the places were males should establish t erritories and even their relative success. However, the number of females using the mating areas in Donana increases during the rut. We observed 20 a reas of meadows, used by grazing females before the rue. At the onset of th e rut, the number of females increased in some of these areas and decreased in others, and the opposite pattern was found after the rutting period. Ch anges in the vegetation at mating and nonmating areas could not account for the changes in female distribution; even some of the highest quality meado ws were vacated by females during rut. In selecting the mating areas, femal es avoided isolated small meadows within the scrub area and preferred large r meadows where a number of neighboring rutting males could be found. Femal es also avoided those areas heavily used by fallow deer (Dama dama), a comp eting sympatric species. We found that females suffered less sexual harassm ent when in larger harems and when their harem was surrounded by other hare ms. Our results, together with those in the Literature about this populatio n, indicate that red deer females collect during the early rut in mating ar eas containing several rutting males, although once there they may select p articular sites based on availability of food rather than based on the pres ence of a particular male. By joining harems in large meadows they are less harassed, and at the same time they probably increase their chances of mat ing with highly competitive males. The results from Donana support the idea that harassment avoidance may lead to female movements to areas with male territories without lek breeding or female comparison of male phenotypes an d may bring an insight into those factors leading to clumps of male territo ries and leks.