New Mexico sits at the thin northern edge of the tawny-bellied cotton rat’s range, and the record reflects that: nearly all of its 470 documented occurrences come from GBIF specimen data, and the most recent dates back to 2014. That gap doesn’t mean the species has vanished from the Gila River corridor and City of Rocks State Park country where it’s been found. It means this small grassland rodent, active mostly after dark, is hard to detect, and New Mexico marks the outer limit of habitat it actually needs.
NatureServe rates the population S4, apparently secure, a step more confident than the stalled record alone would suggest, reflecting the species’ strong core range just across the border in Mexico’s Chihuahuan grasslands.
Records cluster oddly at opposite ends of the calendar, in November and January, a pattern that likely traces old trapping expeditions rather than any real seasonal shift in a rodent that can breed for much of the year when moisture allows.
Full species profile
