Tres Marias cottontail

The Tres Marias cottontail or Tres Marias rabbit (Sylvilagus graysoni) is a medium-sized species of rabbit that is endemic to the Islas Marías in Mexico. Relatively unafraid of humans, the rabbit is the only member of the family Leporidae found on the islands. It prefers the island's dry, tropical forests, and regions with plenty of bushes for cover, which it will rest under for most of the day. It has few predators, with the known native species that feed on it being birds of prey and the Tres Marias raccoon, though it has been threatened by habitat loss due to human developments, as well as browsing by introduced white-tailed deer and goats. The Tres Marias cottontail is considered to be an endangered species by the Mexican government and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and population declines have been reported across most of the species' range, with the exception of the island of San Juanito.

Taxonomy

The Tres Marias cottontail was first identified by American zoologist Joel Asaph Allen in 1877, who named it "Grayson's hare" and placed it in the same genus as the hares, Lepus, giving it the scientific name Lepus graysoni. He described the type locality of the species as simply the "Tres Marias Islands". The species was named after the supplier of the type after which the species was described, ornithologist Andrew J. Grayson. Zoologist Edward William Nelson would later clarify in the 1899 work Mammals of the Tres Marias Islands that the specific island was likely María Madre. The species was reclassified as a member of Sylvilagus, the cottontail rabbits, in mammalogist Marcus Ward Lyon Jr.'s 1904 work Classification of the Hares and their Allies.