Lepus hainanus Swinhoe, 1870 . Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1870:233.

TYPE LOCALITY: Hainan Island, "in the neighbourhood of the capital city" [Hainan Province, China] .

DISTRIBUTION: Lowlands of Hainan Island.

STATUS: Numbers reduced to extremely low levels by habitat alteration and overhunting, but no official status as yet conferred.

SYNONYMS: Monotypic.

COMMENTS: Placed in Caprolagus (Indolagus) by Gureev (1964:146). Considered a subspecies of pequensis by Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951); Flux and Angermann (1990) recommended provisional specific status, as did Gureev (1964). Closely related to nigricollis (Angermann, in litt., 1992).