Key Largo Woodrat
Encyclopedia
The Key Largo Woodrat a subspecies
of the Florida Woodrat
(Neotoma floridana), is a medium-sized rat
found in the northern area of Key Largo, Florida
, in the United States
. It is currently on the United States Fish and Wildlife Service list of endangered species
. The rat grows to 260 grams and feeds on fruit
, leaves
and buds. It has a gray-brown back and white belly, chest, and throat, and a hairy tail. Only 6500 animals were thought to remain in North Key Largo in the late 1980s.
of the widespread Florida Woodrat
(Neotoma floridana). In 1987, Lazell suggested that it is distinct enough to be considered a separate species, but this proposal has not been accepted. The mitochondrial DNA
of Key Largo woodrats is distinct by at least 0.6% from that of the most similar subspecies, Neotoma floridana floridana from further north in Florida, but members of that subspecies differ about as much from each other as from the Key Largo woodrat.
(openings in the roof of the mesopterygoid fossa, the gap behind the palate
), which are narrower and shorter than in N. f. floridana. On average, males are a bit larger than females. In the holotype
, an adult male, total length is 368 mm (14.5 in), tail length 167 mm (6.6 in), hindfoot length 37 mm (1.5 in), ear length 26 mm (1.0 in), dimensions of the testis 14 × 8.5 mm (0.55 × 0.33 in), and mass is 207 g (7.3 oz).
. It is endemic to the tropical hardwood hammock
s of Key Largo, where its habitat has shrunk by half since the 1920s, and the remainder is fragmented, thinned, and developed. It retains some 850 ha
, most of which is in the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park
and the adjacent Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge
.
The Key Largo Woodrat builds nests out of sticks; these nests can be as high as a man's shoulder. They are handed down from generation to generation, and some are possibly centuries old.
, and when a planned reservation for the crocodile in North Key Largo bogged down during the presidential transition in the US Administration in 1980, the woodrat was threatened with extinction; the crocodile reservation was to be a haven for the woodrat, and also for the rare Schaus Swallowtail
butterfly. A project called Port Bougainville, with 15 hotels besides condos, would add 45,000 inhabitants to North Key Largo by the year 2000, adding to the pressure on the crocodile and other animals.
The 406 acres (1.6 km²) project, which by 1982 included a planned 2806 units, ran into opposition from environmental groups and by 1984 had ground to a halt after one of the investors withdrew a $54 million investment. in 1983 already, the administration had intervened and declared the Key Largo Woodrat and the Key Largo Cotton Mouse endangered on a "temporary emergency basis"; the developer of a golf course, for instance, was ordered to restore the area he was illegally developing, to preserve the woodrat's habitat. Since 1984, the Key Largo Woodrat is on the United States list of endangered species
, along with the Schaus Swallowtail and the Key Largo Cotton Mouse.
By the 1990s, the animal's habitat had shrunk to about three square miles, and the Key Largo Woodrat was called "one of the rarest creatures on earth." The animal also suffers from competition with the infamous Rattus rattus.
As of 2005, the Key Largo Woodrat population was still struggling to survive among the half-built condominiums of the former Port Bougainville project, which in 2003 became part of the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park. 400 acres (1.6 km²) of the developer's land were bought up by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
in 1987; the Botanical State Park now takes up 2421 acres (9.8 km²). Besides in this area, the rat finds refuge in the Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge
, which has a captive breeding program currently in operation but increasing development continues to threaten the animal. Supplemental feeding has produced mixed results: they seem to delay the extinction of the species, but when feedings are stopped the "negative population trajectories accelerated."
to stop development around North Key Largo; the Florida Division of Recreation and Parks honored her by naming the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park for her, a year before she died.
The rat's habit of building large nests ("4ft by 6ft homes") was seen as proof that "even wildlife in Florida want enormous homes." Novelist Lydia Millet
paid homage to the woodrat in her 2008 novel How the Dead Dream, a story of a young real estate developer from Los Angeles who, after some personal turmoil, takes an obsessive interest in vanishing species. A 1997 collection of poetry and prose by a writers cooperative from Key West
features a poem ("The Place We Live" by Robin Orlandi) in which the woodrat is mentioned as one of three "endangered native species," alongside the Key deer
and the Stock Island Snail, Orthalicus reses reses
.
Subspecies
Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...
of the Florida Woodrat
Florida Woodrat
The Eastern Woodrat ', is a species of pack rat that is native to the central and eastern United States. Its range extends from the latitude of southeastern New York south to the Gulf of Mexico...
(Neotoma floridana), is a medium-sized rat
Rat
Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...
found in the northern area of Key Largo, Florida
Key Largo, Florida
Key Largo is a census-designated place in Monroe County, Florida, United States, located on the island of Key Largo in the upper Florida Keys. The population was 11,886 at the 2000 census. The name comes from the Spanish Cayo Largo, or "long key"...
, in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It is currently on the United States Fish and Wildlife Service list of endangered species
United States Fish and Wildlife Service list of endangered species
This list contains only the bird and mammal species described as endangered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. It contains species not only in the U.S. and its territories, but also species only found abroad. It does not contain fish, amphibians, reptiles, plants, or invertebrates,...
. The rat grows to 260 grams and feeds on fruit
Fruit
In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...
, leaves
Leaf
A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....
and buds. It has a gray-brown back and white belly, chest, and throat, and a hairy tail. Only 6500 animals were thought to remain in North Key Largo in the late 1980s.
Taxonomy
Although a 1923 article described woodrat nests on Key Largo, the form was not scientifically described until 1955, when H.B. Sherman described it as Neotoma floridana smalli, a subspeciesSubspecies
Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...
of the widespread Florida Woodrat
Florida Woodrat
The Eastern Woodrat ', is a species of pack rat that is native to the central and eastern United States. Its range extends from the latitude of southeastern New York south to the Gulf of Mexico...
(Neotoma floridana). In 1987, Lazell suggested that it is distinct enough to be considered a separate species, but this proposal has not been accepted. The mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA located in organelles called mitochondria, structures within eukaryotic cells that convert the chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, adenosine triphosphate...
of Key Largo woodrats is distinct by at least 0.6% from that of the most similar subspecies, Neotoma floridana floridana from further north in Florida, but members of that subspecies differ about as much from each other as from the Key Largo woodrat.
Description
The Key Largo woodrat is similar to Neotoma floridana floridana and cannot be distinguished from it in size or external anatomy. It differs in the shape of the sphenopalatine vacuitiesSphenopalatine vacuities
In rodents, sphenopalatine vacuities are perforations of the roof of the mesopterygoid fossa, the open space behind the palate, in between the parapterygoid fossae. They may perforate the presphenoid or basisphenoid bone...
(openings in the roof of the mesopterygoid fossa, the gap behind the palate
Palate
The palate is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but, in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separate. The palate is divided into two parts, the anterior...
), which are narrower and shorter than in N. f. floridana. On average, males are a bit larger than females. In the holotype
Holotype
A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described. It is either the single such physical example or one of several such, but explicitly designated as the holotype...
, an adult male, total length is 368 mm (14.5 in), tail length 167 mm (6.6 in), hindfoot length 37 mm (1.5 in), ear length 26 mm (1.0 in), dimensions of the testis 14 × 8.5 mm (0.55 × 0.33 in), and mass is 207 g (7.3 oz).
Distribution and habitat
The animal is found exclusively in the northern part of Key Largo, at least 210 km removed from its nearest kin, the Florida WoodratFlorida Woodrat
The Eastern Woodrat ', is a species of pack rat that is native to the central and eastern United States. Its range extends from the latitude of southeastern New York south to the Gulf of Mexico...
. It is endemic to the tropical hardwood hammock
Tropical hardwood hammock
Tropical hardwood hammocks are closed canopy forests, dominated by a diverse assemblage of evergreen and semi-deciduous tree and shrub species, mostly of West Indian origin...
s of Key Largo, where its habitat has shrunk by half since the 1920s, and the remainder is fragmented, thinned, and developed. It retains some 850 ha
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
, most of which is in the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park
Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park
The Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park is a Florida State Park, located on the northern tip of Key Largo in the Florida Keys, on County Road 905, one-quarter mile north of its intersection with the Overseas Highway ....
and the adjacent Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge
Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge
The Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge is part of the United States National Wildlife Refuge System, located in north Key Largo, less than 40 miles south of Miami off SR 905...
.
Shelter
Conservation
Since the Key Largo Woodrat has a small and specific habitat, it is susceptible to human encroachment. Since the 1920s, it has lost almost half of its traditional habitat. In the early 1980s, biologists began equipping rats with radio devices to count them and study them; by the end of the 1980s, a study showed that the rat had disappeared from Key Largo proper and its total population had dwindled to some 6500 animals on North Key Largo. Its fate in Key Largo was tied to that of the American CrocodileAmerican Crocodile
The American crocodile is a species of crocodilian found in the Neotropics. It is the most widespread of the four extant species of crocodiles from the Americas. Populations occur from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of southern Mexico to South America as far as Peru and Venezuela. It also lives...
, and when a planned reservation for the crocodile in North Key Largo bogged down during the presidential transition in the US Administration in 1980, the woodrat was threatened with extinction; the crocodile reservation was to be a haven for the woodrat, and also for the rare Schaus Swallowtail
Papilio aristodemus
Papilio aristodemus, commonly known as Schaus' Swallowtail, is a species of American butterfly in the Papilionidae family. It is found in the southern Florida with subspecies in the Bahamas, Hispaniola, and Cuba. Historically it occurred in tropical hardwood hammock from South Miami to Lower...
butterfly. A project called Port Bougainville, with 15 hotels besides condos, would add 45,000 inhabitants to North Key Largo by the year 2000, adding to the pressure on the crocodile and other animals.
The 406 acres (1.6 km²) project, which by 1982 included a planned 2806 units, ran into opposition from environmental groups and by 1984 had ground to a halt after one of the investors withdrew a $54 million investment. in 1983 already, the administration had intervened and declared the Key Largo Woodrat and the Key Largo Cotton Mouse endangered on a "temporary emergency basis"; the developer of a golf course, for instance, was ordered to restore the area he was illegally developing, to preserve the woodrat's habitat. Since 1984, the Key Largo Woodrat is on the United States list of endangered species
United States Fish and Wildlife Service list of endangered species
This list contains only the bird and mammal species described as endangered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. It contains species not only in the U.S. and its territories, but also species only found abroad. It does not contain fish, amphibians, reptiles, plants, or invertebrates,...
, along with the Schaus Swallowtail and the Key Largo Cotton Mouse.
By the 1990s, the animal's habitat had shrunk to about three square miles, and the Key Largo Woodrat was called "one of the rarest creatures on earth." The animal also suffers from competition with the infamous Rattus rattus.
As of 2005, the Key Largo Woodrat population was still struggling to survive among the half-built condominiums of the former Port Bougainville project, which in 2003 became part of the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park. 400 acres (1.6 km²) of the developer's land were bought up by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is a United States government corporation created by the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933. It provides deposit insurance, which guarantees the safety of deposits in member banks, currently up to $250,000 per depositor per bank. , the FDIC insures deposits at...
in 1987; the Botanical State Park now takes up 2421 acres (9.8 km²). Besides in this area, the rat finds refuge in the Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge
Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge
The Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge is part of the United States National Wildlife Refuge System, located in north Key Largo, less than 40 miles south of Miami off SR 905...
, which has a captive breeding program currently in operation but increasing development continues to threaten the animal. Supplemental feeding has produced mixed results: they seem to delay the extinction of the species, but when feedings are stopped the "negative population trajectories accelerated."
Cultural importance
The threat to many threatened species but especially the woodrat and the cotton mouse generated broad interest in the Florida keys in the 1980s, with many environmental groups being formed. Anna Dagny Johnson (1918-2003), a well-known environmentalist, led efforts by the Upper Keys Citizens Association and the Izaak Walton LeagueIzaak Walton League
The Izaak Walton League is an American environmental organization founded in 1922 that promotes natural resource protection and outdoor recreation. The organization was founded in Chicago, Illinois by a group of sportsmen who wished to protect fishing opportunities for future generations...
to stop development around North Key Largo; the Florida Division of Recreation and Parks honored her by naming the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park for her, a year before she died.
The rat's habit of building large nests ("4ft by 6ft homes") was seen as proof that "even wildlife in Florida want enormous homes." Novelist Lydia Millet
Lydia Millet
Lydia Millet is an American novelist. Her third novel, My Happy Life, won the 2003 PEN-USA Award for Fiction. Her fifth novel, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart was short-listed for the 2007 Arthur C. Clarke Award...
paid homage to the woodrat in her 2008 novel How the Dead Dream, a story of a young real estate developer from Los Angeles who, after some personal turmoil, takes an obsessive interest in vanishing species. A 1997 collection of poetry and prose by a writers cooperative from Key West
Key West
Key West is an island in the Straits of Florida on the North American continent at the southernmost tip of the Florida Keys. Key West is home to the southernmost point in the Continental United States; the island is about from Cuba....
features a poem ("The Place We Live" by Robin Orlandi) in which the woodrat is mentioned as one of three "endangered native species," alongside the Key deer
Key Deer
The Key Deer is an endangered deer that lives only in the Florida Keys. It is a subspecies of the White-tailed deer .-Physical description and behavior:...
and the Stock Island Snail, Orthalicus reses reses
Orthalicus reses
Orthalicus reses, common name the Stock Island treesnail, is a species of large tropical air-breathing land snail, a tree snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family Orthalicidae....
.