Foreword

The International Deer Biology Congress returned to a European venue in 2022, with the 10th Congress being held in Croatia. We thank Dean Konjević (Congress chair) and his committee for their work in organising this very successful meeting at the Agriculture University Josip Juraj Strossmayer in Osijek. The local organising committee included Miljenko Bujanić, Nikolina Škvorc (secretary), Marko Poletto (IT support), Zdravko Janicki, Tihomir Florijančić, Ivica Bošković, Nenad Turk, Krunoslav Zmaić, Krešimir Krapinec, Gorazd Vengušt, Diana Žele, Krunoslav Pintur, Dejan Bugarski, Jovan Mirčeta, Nikica Šprem, Vlado Jumić and Charlotte Francesca Stiles. The Scientific Steering Committee for this Congress was Jo Anne Smith-Flueck (chair) (Argentina), Min Chen (China), Pierre Comizzoli (USA), Gordon Dryden (Australia), Werner Flueck (Argentina), Susana González (Uruguay), David Hewitt (USA), Koichi Kaji (Japan), Dean Konjevic (Croatia), Nicholas Tyler (Norway) and Eva Wiklund (Sweden).

Sixteen years had passed since the congress was last held on European soil, that being the 6th IDBC in Prague, Czech Republic. In the interim, quadrennial venues included Chile, China and Colorado (USA) respectively.

As in the previous meetings, the 10th Congress covered a wide range of disciplines. The seven plenary presentations reflected the broad diversity of interests embraced by deer biologists, and it’s noteworthy that, for the first time, speakers addressed the existential issue of climate change, and the effects of this on deer ecology. Plenary presentations discussed the new and developing fields of deer and climate change, amino acid nutrition, threats to deer conservation in a changing world, the unique characteristics of antlers as possible bio-indicators of environmental pollution, using antler growth as a model for anti-cancer treatment, the relationship between deer genetics and deer taxonomy, and host-parasite interactions in European deer.

The deer biology community was saddened by the death of Prof Valerius Geist on 6 July 2021. Prof Geist made a large and valuable contribution to the scientific study of the ecology, conservation management and ethology of deer and this contribution was recognised by dedicating the Proceedings of this Congress to his memory. We have included a tribute to Prof Geist in these Proceedings.

An international three-member committee presented the George Bubenik Memorial award – in honour of one of the leading world deer researchers – for the best lecture presented by a young scientist. This award went to Savannah Grace for her presentation ‘SARS-CoV-2 in farmed Florida white-tailed deer’. The award for the best poster was won by Christian Ehrmantraut for ‘The influence of climatic changes on embryonic diapause in roe deer in Bavaria’.

The IDBC has a rich history. The sequence of congresses was initiated in 1982 when a conference was held in Texas, USA. This was closely followed by a conference in Dunedin, New Zealand in February of 1983. After a hiatus of several years, a third was held in 1990 in Mississippi, USA. All congresses, thereafter, were held quadrennially. The official name of International Deer Biology Congress was first applied to the 4th congress, which was organised in Kaposvár, Hungary in 1998. This history of the IDBC is described in a contribution by László Sugár, Jo Anne Smith-Flueck and Gordon Dryden in these Proceedings.

Beginning with the 6th IDBC in Chile, 2010, the Scientific Steering Committee has agreed for each congress proceedings to be published in a special issue of Animal Production Science and the 10th IDBC Proceedings are contained in this special issue. These Proceedings break new ground, in that as well as the plenary presentations, which are included here as reviewed full papers, the Scientific Steering Committee also invited several attendees who had submitted abstracts to contribute a full paper, and these are also included in these Proceedings. In another new development, these Proceedings include several short communications which are based on presentations submitted at the Congress. All of the scientific material published in these Proceedings has been peer reviewed and is citable.