FOUR NEW RACCOONS FROM THE KEYS OF 

 SOUTHERN FLORIDA 



By E. W. nelson 

 (With Five Plates) 



Between the last of February and late in March, 1930, the author 

 visited the keys lying about the southern end of Florida and collected 

 on them a series of -61 specimens of raccoons. The keys, or islands, 

 visited proved to be segregated into four rather well-defined groups 

 and the specimens collected show very definitely that each group is oc- 

 cupied by a subspecies of Procyon lotor peculiar to it, and all dififering 

 from Procyon lotor chiciis of the neighboring mainland. 



The main islands of each group are named below but, in addition, 

 each group includes many smaller islets practically all of which are 

 covered with mangroves. 



1st. Ten Thousand Islands Group forms a broad compact belt of 

 mangrove keys lying for about 100 miles along the southwestern 

 coast of the peninsula, from a little south of Naples down to Shark 

 River. The width of this belt varies from one to several miles, its 

 exact width and some other details not being as accurate as desirable 

 in published maps I have seen. 



2d. Key Largo Group, as here considered, lies along the south- 

 eastern border of the peninsula and includes Virginia and Biscayne 

 Keys just north of the entrance to Biscayne Bay, and Elliott Key, 

 Key Largo, Plantation Key with Upper and Lower Matecumbe Keys 

 to the south of the entrance. 



3d. Key Vaca Group lies southwesterly from the preceding group 

 and begins with Long Key on the north and extends south to include 

 Duck, Grassy, and Fat Deer Keys, Key Vaca, and Knights Key. 



4th. Big Pine Key Group still farther to the southwest includes 

 No Name, Big and Little Pine Keys, Torch Keys, Ramrod, Cudjoe, 

 Summerland, Saddlebunch, and Boca Chica Keys, and Key West. 



The isolation of raccoons of the Procyon lotor type in islands on 

 the Atlantic coast side of the continent from Cozumel Island, oflf the 

 peninsula of Yucatan, to the Bahamas and the coast of southern 

 Florida, has tended toward the production of depauperate forms as 

 all of them are smaller than the animals of the adjacent mainland. 

 On the Pacific side of the continent the raccoons of the Tres Marias 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 82, No. 8 



