Editing Reindeer (section)

=== Naming and research on museum collections ===
[[Carl Linnaeus]] in 1758 named the Eurasian tundra species ''Cervus tarandus'', the genus ''Rangifer'' being credited to Smith, 1827.<ref name="ITZN-1958" />

''Rangifer'' has had a convoluted history because of the similarity in antler architecture (brow tines asymmetrical and often palmate, bez tines, a back tine sometimes branched, and branched at the distal end, often palmate).{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}} Because of individual variability, early taxonomists were unable to discern consistent patterns among populations, nor could they, examining collections in Europe, appreciate the difference in habitats and the differing function they imposed on antler architecture.{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}} Comparative morphometrics, the measurement of skulls, is often seen as more objective than description of differences of color or antler patterns, but actually confounds genetic variance with epistatic and statistical variance as well as compounded environment-based variance.<ref name="Geist-2007" />

For example, woodland caribou males, rutting in boreal forest where only a few females can be found, collect harems and defend them against other males, for which they have short, straight, strong, much-branched antlers, beams flattened in cross-section, designed for combat — and not too large, so as not to impede them in forested winter ranges.{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}}

By contrast, modern tundra caribou (see [[Reindeer#Evolution|Evolution]] above) have synchronized calving as a predator-avoidance strategy, which requires large rutting aggregations.{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}} Males cannot defend a harem because, while he was busy fighting, they would disappear into the mass of the herd. Males therefore tend individual females; their fights are infrequent and brief.{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}} Their antlers are thin, beams round in cross-section, sweep back and then forward with a cluster of branches at the top; these are designed more for visual stimulation of the females.{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}} Their bez tines are set low, just above the brow tine, which is vertically flattened to protect the eyes while the buck "threshes" low brush, a courtship display.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pruitt Jr. |first=William |date=1966 |title=The Function of the Brow-Tine in Caribou Antlers |journal=Arctic |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=110–113|doi=10.14430/arctic3419 |doi-access=free }}</ref> The low bez tines help the wide flat brow tines dig craters in the hard-packed tundra snow for forage, for which reason brow tines are often called "shovels" in North America and "ice tines" in Europe. The differences in antler architecture reflect fundamental differences in ecology and behavior, and in turn deep divisions in ancestry that were not apparent to the early taxonomists.

Similarly, working on museum collections where skins were often faded and in poor states of preservation, early taxonomists could not readily perceive differences in coat patterns that are consistent within a subspecies, but variable among them. Geist calls these "nuptial" characteristics: sexually selected characters that are highly conserved and diagnostic among subspecies.<ref name="Geist1998" /><ref name="Geist-2007" />