Kansas’s western deer mouse reports reflect a recent taxonomic split: a 2019 genetic study divided the once-unified deer mouse into an eastern lineage that kept the name Peromyscus maniculatus and a western lineage now called Peromyscus sonoriensis. Records logged under this name are the more western-flavored reports, distinct from the eastern deer mouse now tracked separately.
With 33 iNaturalist reports and no GBIF specimens counted, every entry traces back to a photographed sighting rather than a museum lot. Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area leads with three logged reports, followed by single reports at Clinton State Park and Konza Prairie Biological Station, a spread that favors mixed wetland edges, oak woodland, and tallgrass rather than any one habitat type.
Reports cluster in early summer and again in October, more likely tracking when small-mammal surveys and photographers are active than any real double breeding peak. At the 42nd percentile for report volume, it sits solidly in the middle of Kansas’s mapped mammals, neither rare nor commonly logged.
Full species profile
