Broad-Headed Skink: Blue-Brown Tail, Brown-Olive Body, Triangle Head

Summary: North American broad-headed skink habitats get brown-olive bodies with big jaws, blue-brown tails, five stripes, four five-toed legs and triangular heads.

female and male, with engorged orangeish cheeks signaling breeding season, broad-headed skinks (Plestiodon laticeps); Mason Neck State Park, southernmost Prince William County, Northern Virginia; Thursday, May 17, 2012, 17:52: Judy Gallagher, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons

North American broad-headed skink habitats adapt to woody distribution ranges from southern Pennsylvania through northern Florida, eastern Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, southeasternmost Iowa and southern Illinois, Indiana and Ohio and everywhere in-between.

Broad-headed skinks bear their common name for bold jaws broadening into triangular heads and for Scincidae family membership with the world's burrowing, climbing, creeping scincid lizards. The scientific name Plestiodon laticeps calls up the many teeth and the wide head that characterize the first, genus name's and the second, species name's constituency. Scientific designations defer to descriptions in 1801 by Johann Gottlob Theaenus Schneider (Jan. 18, 1750-Jan. 12, 1822), German-born naturalist and specialist in ancient Greek and Latin.

Broad-headed skink life cycles expect humid mixed oak forests, open woodlands and suburban groves with leaf litter and underground- to canopy-level crawling, flying, nesting invertebrate prey.

April through May fit broad-headed skinks with coal, five-lined, four-lined, Gilbert's, ground, many-lined, mole, Plains, prairie, sand, southeastern and western skinks variously mating January through August.

Broad-headed skinks go out daily as North America's most arboreal skink since five-lined and southeastern five-lined skinks go for lower-trunk forages and sunbaths, not canopy sleepovers. They hasten after crawling and paused, low-lying and low-flying, ground-level, near-ground and underground, suburban and woodland invertebrate prey once their body temperatures head into optimum ranges. Defensive and offensive involvements initiate hissing, inundating predators and rivals with tail tips shattered along fracture lines and sticking out oval, thick tongues with shallow-notched tips.

Agro-industrialists, breeders, collectors, polluters and predatory armadillos, crows, foxes, hawks, kestrels, moles, opossums, raccoons, shrews, shrikes, snakes and striped skunks jeopardize North American broad-headed skink habitats.

Broad-headed skinks know angry confrontations among rivals, brief courtships and internal fertilizations of calcium carbonate-shelled, 0.04-ounce (1-gram) eggs that females keep laying from May through July.

Brooding mothers-to-be lace themselves around successive 6- to 22-egg clutches since each incubation lasts two months and leads to little adult-like hatchlings between June and September. Hatchlings measure 2.4 to 3.1 inches (6.09 to 7.87 centimeters) long whereas juveniles manifest black or dark brown bodies with bright blue tails and brilliant stripes. Crawling and low-, slow-flying, day-active, ground- to near-ground-level, opportunistic ants, beetles, centipedes, cockroaches, crickets, flies, gnats, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, moths, slugs, snails, spiders and termites nourish adults.

North American broad-headed skink habitats offer season-coldest temperature ranges, north to southward, from minus 5 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20.55 to minus 3.88 degrees Celsius).

Barrier islands, bushes, cypress heads, debris-strewn lots, hammocks, leaf litter, live oaks, old woodpecker holes, palmettos, rocks, snags, standing dead trees and swamps protect broad-headed skinks.

About 4.8 to 5.6 inches (12.19 to 14.22 centimeters) and 6.5 to 12.75 inches (16.51 to 32.38 centimeters) quantify mature snout-vent (excrementary opening) and total lengths. Brown to olive-brown mature bodies reveal a lengthwise-running scaly row under blue to brown tails and five broad light stripes from neck to long tail tips. Age steadily strips mature bodies of their striking stripes but never stops dark-eyed, mobile-tongued, sharp-toothed, strong-jawed mature male heads from suffusing with red-orange during mating seasons.

Brown-olive bodies with bold jaws, five lengthwise-tending stripes, four five-toed legs, lengthwise-trending scaly rows under blue-brown tails and triangular heads tackle North American broad-headed skink habitats.

Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, map of "geographic distribution of Plestiodon laticeps," with range data from Hammerson, G.A. 2007. Plestiodon laticeps. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 04 December 2012, @ https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/64231/12756745: rbrausse; IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

female and male, with engorged orangeish cheeks signaling breeding season, broad-headed skinks (Plestiodon laticeps); Mason Neck State Park, southernmost Prince William County, Northern Virginia; Thursday, May 17, 2012, 17:52: Judy Gallagher, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Broad-headed_Skink_-_Eumeces_laticeps,_Mason_Neck_State_Park,_Lorton,_Virginia_-_7219337662.jpg; Judy Gallagher (Judy Gallagher), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/52450054@N04/7219337662/

Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, map of "geographic distribution of Plestiodon laticeps," with range data from Hammerson, G.A. 2007. Plestiodon laticeps. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 04 December 2012, @ https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/64231/12756745: rbrausse; IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plestiodon_laticeps_distribution.png

For further information:

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 7, Reptiles, edited by Michael Hutchins, James B. Murphy, and Neil Schlager. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2003.

Holbrook, John Edwards. 1838. "Scincus erythrocephalus. -- Gilliams. Plate XXII." North American Herpetology; Or, A Description of the Reptiles Inhabiting the United States. Vol. II: 101-104. Philadelphia PA: J. Dobson.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/3688428

Holbrook, John Edwards. 1838. "Scincus quinquelineatus. -- Linnaus. Plate VI." North American Herpetology; Or, A Description of the Reptiles Inhabiting the United States. Vol. III: 39-43. Philadelphia PA: J. Dobson.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/3683010

Roberts, Kory (kaptainkory). 3 January 2007. "Broad-headed Skink (Plestiodon laticeps)." Herps of Arkansas > Lizards.
Available @ http://www.herpsofarkansas.com/Lizard/PlestiodonLaticeps

Schneider, Joann (Johann) Gottlob. 1801. "Scincus laticeps." Historiae Amphibiorum Naturalis et Literariae. Fasciculus Secundus Continens Crocodilos, Scincos, Chamaesauras, Boas, Pseudoboas, Elapes, Angues, Amphisbaenas et Caecilias: 189-190. Frommani, Jena, Germany: Fried. Frommann, 1801.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/3700483
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/historiaeamphibi02schn#page/189/mode/1up

Taylor, Edward H. May 1932. University of Kansas Science Bulletin, vol. XX (whole series, vol. XXX), part 2, no. 14 (May 1932): 263-271; Plates XIX-XX. Lawrence KS: University of Kansas.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4395956

Uetz, Peter. "Plestiodon laticeps (Schneider, 1801)." Reptile Database.
Available @ http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Plestiodon&species=laticeps&search_param=%28%28search%3D%27Plestiodon+laticeps%27%29%29