Key Largo woodrat

The Key Largo woodrat, Neotoma floridana smalli, is a medium-sized rat that lives only in the northern part of Key Largo, Florida, and is a subspecies of the eastern woodrat. It was described in 1955, and a 1987 suggestion that it deserves species rank has not been accepted. It cannot be told from the mainland Florida woodrat by size or outward appearance, grows to about 260 g, and has a gray-brown back with a white belly, chest and throat. It lives in the tropical hardwood hammocks of Key Largo, where its habitat has shrunk by about half since the 1920s, and retains some 850 ha, mostly in the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park and Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge. It eats fruit, leaves and buds, and builds large stick nests that later generations reuse. It has been on the United States endangered species list since 1984, and invasive black rats compete with it.