Cotton mice carry a NatureServe S5 secure rank in South Carolina, and the record leans almost entirely on GBIF specimen data (20 of 20 records, with only 6 also appearing on iNaturalist), meaning trapping surveys, not casual photographs, built nearly the entire dataset for this common Peromyscus mouse.
April alone accounts for 11 of the 20 records, more than half the year’s total, with May next at 6, and Clarendon County holds 13 of them; that pattern likely tracks the timing and location of concentrated spring trapping rather than any dramatic real seasonal shift in the mouse’s own activity, since no records at all fall between August and February.




