Data from: Pan-European phylogeography of the European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus)

To provide the most comprehensive picture of species phylogeny and
phylogeography of European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), we analysed
mtDNA control region (610 bp) of 1469 samples of roe deer from Central and
Eastern Europe and included in the analyses an additional 1,541 mtDNA
sequences from GenBank from other regions of the continent. We detected
two mtDNA lineages of the species: European and Siberian (an introgression
of C. pygargus mtDNA into C. capreolus). The Siberian lineage was most
frequent in the eastern part of the continent and declined towards Central
Europe. The European lineage contained three clades (Central, Eastern and
Western) composed of several subclades, many of which were separated in
space. The Western clade appeared to have a discontinuous range from
Portugal to Russia. Most of the subclades in the Central and the Eastern
clades were under expansion during the Weichselian glacial period before
the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), while the expansion time of the Western
clade overlapped with the Eemian interglacial. The high genetic diversity
of extant roe deer is the result of their survival during the LGM probably
in a large, contiguous range spanning from the Iberian Peninsula to the
Caucasus Mts. and in two northern refugia.