RAPD analysis of systematic relationships among the Cervidae

We investigated the possible application of RAPD (Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA) analysis to the study of the systematic relationships of five cervid taxa. Amplifications with eight different primers gave reproducible electrophoretic patterns which could be regarded as a data-set consisting of monomorphic and polymorphic characters. Some of these characters are species- and subspecies-specific. Band-sharing analysis and numerical taxonomy methods allowed us to generate a phenetic tree. Our results point out new possible systematic considerations within the examined taxa.