ABSTRACT Invasive predators exert negative impacts on global biodiversity with outsized effects on island endemic species. The Burmese python ( Python bivittatus ) has recently increased in prevalence in the Florida Keys, USA, posing a threat to endemic wildlife. In 2017, Hurricane Irma made landfall as a Category 4 storm, inducing flooding, extensive canopy damage, and likely served as a python dispersal event. The Key Largo woodrat ( Neotoma floridana smalli ) and Key Largo cotton mouse ( Peromyscus gossypinus allapaticola ) are two endangered rodent subspecies, endemic to Key Largo, that have struggled to maintain stable populations in the face of these obstacles. Here, we investigated how Key Largo woodrat and cotton mouse populations have fluctuated since 2017. We used spatially explicit capture‐recapture models to analyze live‐trapping data from North Key Largo, from 2017 through 2024. Woodrat density declined following Hurricane Irma, coinciding with increased detections of pythons, and continued decreasing from 3.48 ± 0.50 SD individuals/ha to 0.61 ± 0.20 SD individuals/ha. However, cotton mouse density increased from 1.57 ± 0.28 SD individuals/ha to 5.35 ± 0.57 SD individuals/ha. These findings illustrate the contrasting dynamics of two native species associated with the changing prevalence of invasive pythons and other effects of global change.
Sayers et al. (Thu,) studied this question.