Figure 1: A European roe deer (Capreolus
capreolus). Along with the Siberian roe deer (C. pygargus),
these species are the only two artiodactyls capable of obligate
diapause, which allows the timing of the birth of offspring to coincide
with favourable environmental conditions.
The intensive climate fluctuations of the Pleistocene have had an
outsized influence on genetic diversity and geographic structure of
animal and plant populations (Hofreiter & Stewart, 2009). However,
distinguishing whether patterns of contemporary genetic diversity in a
population are consistent with the impacts of past/ongoing selection,
historical demography, or both, can be a challenging endeavour
(Fig. 2 ). The historical demography of a population also
directly influences natural selection: the relative importance of
stochastic processes increases with reduced effective population size
(Ne ), limiting the efficacy of selection (Kimura,
Maruyama, & Crow, 1963). Therefore, considering both natural selection
and demography together can greatly add to our understanding of
evolutionary dynamics in general, and of focal species in particular. In
this study, de Jong et al. (2020) not only consider the impact of
demography and selection, but how these forces acted at different time
scales during the evolution of roe deer (Capreolus spp.), through
genomic analyses at multiple taxonomic levels (Fig. 3 ).
[ Fig. 2 uploaded separately as pdf]