Notes on the distribution of eastern woodrats and hispid cotton rats in south-central Nebraska

The eastern woodrat (Neotoma floridana) and hispid cotton rat (Sigmodon hispidus) reach distributional limits in southern Nebraska (Jones 1964, Farney 1975). In the last half-century, both species have expanded their distributional ranges in the region (Kugler and Geluso 2009, Wright et al. 2010). Herein, we report new localities of occurrence for both species that extend known distributional boundaries in south-central Nebraska beyond those reported by Kugler and Geluso (2009) and Wright et al. (2010). Associated with other studies, we captured small mammals in Sherman live-traps in south-central Nebraska. Voucher specimens were deposited in collections at the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK; formally referred to as Vertebrate Museum of Kearney State College—VMKSC) and University of Nebraska State Museum (UNSM) in the Division of Zoology. Our trapping and handling procedures for small mammals followed guidelines of the American Society of Mammalogists (Gannon et al. 2007, Sikes et al. 2011) and were approved by the Animal Care and Use Committees at the United States Geological Survey’s Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (Study Plan 8330-0M0P3) and University of Nebraska at Kearney (#060408). We followed Genoways et al. (2008) for common and scientific names of mammals and Kaul et al. (2006) for common and scientific names of plants reported herein.