Morphology and physiology evaluation of frozen-thawed epididymal spermatozoa from huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus, Molina, 1782)

PELUFO VALERIA; AISEN EDUARDO; MALCOTTI VALERIA; J.A. SMITH-FLUECK; OUSSET MARIA JULIA; MORELL MALENA; W. FLUECK

Osijek

Conferencia; 10th International Deer Biology Conference; 2022

The endangered Patagonian huemul is the southern-most endemic cervid in the world.The entire population, along 2000 km of the southern Andes in Argentina and Chile consists of1048-1500 individuals divided into approximately 101 fragmented subpopulations. Moreover,given their remoteness in Andean Mountain terrain, they are extremely difficult to study. Little isknown of their basic biology. Until this study, no huemul groups had ever been monitored withradios in Argentina. Here, we provide the first case study to evaluate and describe quality offrozen-thawed huemul spermatozoa.