The Key deer (''Odocoileus virginianus clavium'') is an
endangered
An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...
deer
Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer ...
that lives only in the
Florida Keys
The Florida Keys are a coral cay archipelago located off the southern coast of Florida, forming the southernmost part of the continental United States. They begin at the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula, about south of Miami, and e ...
. It is a subspecies of the
white-tailed deer
The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...
(''O. virginianus''). It is the smallest extant North American deer species.
Description
This deer can be recognized by its characteristic size, smaller than all other white-tailed deer. Adult males (known as bucks) usually weigh and stand about tall at the shoulder. Adult females (does) usually weigh between and have an average height of at the shoulders. The deer is a reddish-brown to grey-brown in color.
Antler
Antlers are extensions of an animal's skull found in members of the Cervidae (deer) family. Antlers are a single structure composed of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, and blood vessels. They are generally found only on male ...
s are grown by males and shed between February and March and regrown by June. When the antlers are growing, they have a white velvet coating. The subspecies otherwise generally resembles other white-tailed deer in appearance.
Behavior
Key deer easily swim between
island
An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...
s. Living close to humans, they have little of the natural fear of man shown by most of their larger mainland relatives (an example of
island tameness
Island tameness is the tendency of many populations and species of animals living on isolated islands to lose their wariness of potential predators, particularly of large animals. The term is partly synonymous with ecological naïveté, which also ...
). The deer are often found in residents' yards and along roadsides where plants and flowers grow. This often results in car-to-deer collisions, as the deer are more active (and harder to avoid) at night. Seeing them at dusk and dawn is not unusual.
Breeding occurs all year, but peaks in October and December. Territorial activity is limited to defending a receptive doe from other bucks. Longevity records are 9 years for males and 7 years for females. Adult females form loose matriarchal groups with one or two generations of offspring, while bucks feed and bed together only outside the breeding season.
Range, habitat, and diet
The range of the Key deer originally encompassed all of the lower Florida Keys (where standing water pools exist), but is now limited to a stretch of the Florida Keys from about
Sugarloaf Key
Sugarloaf Key is a single island in the lower Florida Keys that forms a loop on the Atlantic Ocean side giving the illusion of separate islands. Although frequently referred to simply and with technical accuracy as "Sugarloaf Key", this island c ...
to
Bahia Honda Key
Bahia Honda (meaning ''deep bay'', in Spanish, locally pronounced: BAY-ah HON-da , also pronounced : Bah-EE-ah OWN-dah ) is an island in the lower Florida Keys.
U.S. 1 (the Overseas Highway) crosses the key at approximately mile markers 36-38 ...
. Key deer use all islands during the
wet season
The wet season (sometimes called the Rainy season) is the time of year when most of a region's average annual rainfall occurs. It is the time of year where the majority of a country's or region's annual precipitation occurs. Generally, the sea ...
when drinking water is more generally available, retreating to islands with a perennial supply of fresh water in dry months. By the summer of August 2019 most individuals were living on only one of the Florida Key islands,
Big Pine Key
Big or BIG may refer to:
* Big, of great size or degree
Film and television
* ''Big'' (film), a 1988 fantasy-comedy film starring Tom Hanks
* '' Big!'', a Discovery Channel television show
* ''Richard Hammond's Big'', a television show present ...
.
Key deer inhabit nearly all
habitat
In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...
s within their range, including
pine rocklands
The South Florida rocklands ecoregion, in the tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests biome, occurs in southern Florida and the Florida Keys in the United States, where they would naturally cover an area of . These forests form on lim ...
,
hardwood hammocks,
mangrove
A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evoluti ...
s, and
freshwater wetlands. The species feeds on over 150 types of plants, but
mangroves
A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in several ...
(
red
Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondar ...
,
white
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...
, and
black
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...
) and
thatch palm Thatch palm is a common name for several different species of palm trees that are used for thatching, and may refer to:
*''Coccothrinax'', many species native to the Caribbean
*''Howea'', two species native to Lord Howe Island, Australia
*''Thrin ...
berries
A berry is a small, pulpy, and often edible fruit. Typically, berries are juicy, rounded, brightly colored, sweet, sour or tart, and do not have a stone or pit, although many pips or seeds may be present. Common examples are strawberries, raspb ...
make up the most important parts of their diets. Pine rockland habitat is important, as well, because it is often the only reliable source of fresh drinking water (Key deer can tolerate drinking only mildly
brackish
Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estuari ...
water).
Habitat destruction
Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...
due to human encroachment causes many deer to feed on non-native
ornamental plant
Ornamental plants or garden plants are plants that are primarily grown for their beauty but also for qualities such as scent or how they shape physical space. Many flowering plants and garden varieties tend to be specially bred cultivars that i ...
s.
History
The Key deer is a subspecies of white-tailed deer which migrated to the Florida Keys from the mainland over a
land bridge
In biogeography, a land bridge is an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, over which animals and plants are able to cross and Colonisation (biology), colonize new lands. A land bridge can be created by marine regre ...
during the
Wisconsin glaciation
The Wisconsin Glacial Episode, also called the Wisconsin glaciation, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cor ...
. The earliest known written reference to Key deer comes from the writings of
Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda
Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda ( – after 1575, dates uncertain) was a Spanish shipwreck survivor who lived among the Native Americans of Florida for 17 years. His c. 1575 memoir, ''Memoria de las cosas y costa y indios de la Florida'', is one ...
, a Spanish sailor
shipwreck
A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. Angela Croome reported in January 1999 that there were approximately ...
ed in the Florida Keys and captured by
Native Americans in the 1550s.
Endangered status
Key deer were hunted as a food supply by native tribes, passing sailors, and early settlers. Hunting them was banned in 1939, but widespread
poaching
Poaching has been defined as the illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights.
Poaching was once performed by impoverished peasants for subsistence purposes and to supplement meager diets. It was set a ...
and
habitat destruction
Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...
caused the subspecies to plummet to near-extinction by the 1950s. The
National Key Deer Refuge
The National Key Deer Refuge is a National Wildlife Refuge located on Big Pine Key and No Name Key in the Florida Keys in Monroe County, Florida.
The refuge is home to the endangered Key deer, a subspecies of the white-tailed deer that is ende ...
, a federally administered
National Wildlife Refuge
National Wildlife Refuge System is a designation for certain protected areas of the United States managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The National Wildlife Refuge System is the system of public lands and waters set aside to c ...
operated by the
Wildlife Service, was established in 1957.
Recent population estimates put the population between 700 and 800, putting it on the list of endangered species. Road kills from drivers on
US 1
U.S. Route 1 or U.S. Highway 1 (US 1) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway that serves the East Coast of the United States. It runs from Key West, Florida, north to Fort Kent, Maine, at the Canadian border, making i ...
, which traverses the deer's small range, are also a major threat, averaging between 125 and 150 kills per year, 70% of the annual mortality.
However, the population has made an encouraging rise since 1955, when population estimates ranged as low as 25, and appears to have stabilized in recent years. Still, recent human encroachment into the fragile habitat and the deer's relatively low rate of reproduction point to an uncertain future for the subspecies. In August 2019 the
USFWS
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS or FWS) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior dedicated to the management of fish, wildlife, and natural habitats. The mission of the agency is "working with othe ...
recommended that the Key deer be "delisted due to recovery".
Screw worm infestation
In September 2016, a
screw worm infestation was discovered (the first infestation of its kind in the U.S. since 1982) to be affecting the Key deer population, necessitating the euthanasia of affected animals. The screw worm is a fly larva that enters an open wound of a live animal and eats the flesh of the animal from within, leading to a gruesome death. The female fly mates once in her life, so the infestation can be battled by introducing sterile male flies to the population, causing the females to die out without laying fertile eggs. Other steps to battle the outbreak included injecting deer with antiparasitic drugs, fencing off healthy sections of the population, and tracking a portion of deer with radio collars. The pest was declared as eradicated in April 2017. The outbreak killed 135 deer, roughly an eighth of the herd.
Conservation efforts
Conservation efforts include the establishment of the National Key Deer Refuge, which consists of about on Big Pine, No Name Key, and several smaller uninhabited islands. Not all of the refuge lands are protected as public lands; despite extensive efforts of the refuge to purchase these private habitat lands for protection in the refuge, about currently remain in private ownership and can potentially be developed. About of this privately developable land is on Big Pine Key and No Name Key, which are the central population areas for the deer.
In 2006, a
habitat conservation
Habitat conservation is a management practice that seeks to conserve, protect and restore habitats and prevent species extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range. It is a priority of many groups that cannot be easily characterized in term ...
plan was enacted by Monroe County and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which will limit development in primary habitat and provide for additional habitat purchases over the next 15 years. At the end of this period, however, most of the of privately owned habitat land on Big Pine and No Name Keys will still be open for further development. Thus, while the short term promises some cushion from extinction, the long-term prospects for the deer remain in doubt.
A portion of
U.S. Route 1
U.S. Route 1 or U.S. Highway 1 (US 1) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway that serves the East Coast of the United States. It runs from Key West, Florida, north to Fort Kent, Maine, at the Canadian border, making i ...
was also elevated in 2003 to allow the deer to pass safely beneath the roadway, in an attempt to lessen the chance of road kills. However, no decrease in total traffic deaths has been seen.
The National Key Deer Refuge encourages people to help keep the Key deer wild by not feeding them. Feeding acclimates them to humans and vehicles, and makes them more likely to be hit and killed by vehicles. Also, hanging around people and developed areas in higher than normal densities makes them more susceptible to diseases, dog attacks, and entanglements in human trash, all of which can lead to increased injuries or death. On August 2019, the USFWS initiated a discussion for removing key deer from the
Endangered
An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...
status given its improved numbers and elevated status, but the initiative did not reach any final conclusion.
References
Further reading
* Listed as Endangered (EN D v2.3)
*Authorities: Habitat Conservation Plan, 2006; FWS Biological Opinion on NFIP, August 2008
External links
National Fish and Wildlife Service species accountNational Key Deer Refuge siteKey Deer Research ProjectKey Deer Information
{{authority control
White-tailed deer
Mammals described in 1922
Florida Keys
Monroe County, Florida
Endemic fauna of Florida
Islands of Florida
Taxa named by Glover Morrill Allen
ESA endangered species
Subspecies