Question

1. Male whitetail deer produce antlers every year and then shed them after the breeding season. Discuss the trade-offs in this cycle.  

2. You Work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. You have been called to a remote area of Uganda to study a mysterious disease that is causing respiratory ailments in a small village. You isolated a bacterium from several patients that seems like a good candidate for the pathogen. How can you determine whether this bacterium is causing the illness?   

Answer 1

1.Deer produce antlers during breeding season. They have pedicles on their head from which the antlers grow every season. Growth starts in the month of April till September. After mating season is over, deer shed antlers by December to March. Antlers provide defence to male from predators and also to fight efficiently with other deer. During mating season, antlers are helpful in mating . Because deer with big antlers can fight effectively. Antlers also attract female deer for mating. Some times deer entangle their antlers with each other while fighting. Thus they may even die due to starvation. Antlers are also heavy for the animal to bear them always on the head.

So there are advantages and disadvantages of antlers in deer.Protection, attracting a mate are advantages. Disadvantages are they are heavy, so they are shed every year and formed again. During fighting, antlers may cause damage to the deer.

So instead of having them all through the year which has its own disadvantages, developing them when required may be helpful.

Loosing the antlers does not cause any difficulty to the animals. So also the formation.