Five-Lined Skink: Blue-Gray-Tailed, Four-Legged Black-Brown Body

Summary: Woody North American five-lined skink habitats get black-brown bodies with blue-gray tails, five broad, lengthwise pale stripes and four five-clawed legs.

male five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus), Ontario's only native lizard species, announce mating season in Petroglyphs Provincial Park, Southern Ontario, east central Canada; Wednesday, May 23, 2012, 12:42: D. Gordon E. Robertson (Dger), CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

North American five-lined skink habitats anticipate distribution ranges from Vermont through northern Florida, eastern Texas, eastern Kansas, Missouri, southern Illinois, central-east Wisconsin, New York and everywhere in-between and in southern Ontario, Canada.

Five-lined skinks bear their common name for broad-, lengthwise-, light-, quintuple-striped backs and for Scincidae membership with the world's burrowing, climbing, crawling scincid lizards outside Antarctica. The scientific name Plestiodon fasciatus communicates the many teeth that the first, genus name claims and the banded bodies that the second, species name configures five-fold. Scientific designations dwell upon descriptions in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778) for the tenth edition of his introduction to Linnaean taxonomic systems.

Five-lined skink life cycles expect leaf-, log-, stump- and trunk-littered hardwood forest clearings and edges, humid woodlands, old woodlots, pine barrens, suburban gardens and wet hammocks.

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

Five-lined skinks go out from their deep underground burrows in the morning to grab the sun's rays on fallen trunks and on rotting logs and stumps. They head out after crawling, low-lying and low-flying, ground-, near-ground- and underground-level, suburban and woodland invertebrate prey once they have their body temperatures at optimum ranges. Defensive and offensive involvements initiate hissing, sticking out oval, thick tongues with shallow-notched tips and tossing tail tips shattered along fracture lines at predators and rivals.

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

Five-lined skinks know angry confrontations among rivals, Maytime courtships and internal fertilizations of calcium carbonate-shelled, 0.1-inch (1.3-centimeter) eggs that females keep laying between mid-May and June.

Mothers-to-be lace themselves around successive 4- to 11-egg clutches since each two-month incubation leads to 1.97- to 2.2-inch (5- to 6.4-centimeter) hatchlings between June and August. Juveniles match bright blue tails with brilliant, broad, contrasting, lengthwise stripes along backs and sides and measure about one-half mature snout-vent (excrementary opening) and total lengths. 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 five-lined skink habitats offer season-coldest temperature ranges, north to southward, from minus 5 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20.5 to minus 3.88 degrees Celsius).

Beach debris, brush, building cracks, driftwood, logs, loose bark, river margins, rock crevices, rocky outcrops, rotting wood, sawdust, snags, stumps and submerged objects protect five-lined skinks.

Five to 8.06 inches (12.7 to 20.48 centimeters) and 0.1 to 0.35 ounces (2.84 to 9.92 grams) respectively queue up as mature total lengths and weights. Adults retain black or brown bodies with five broad, light stripes and blue to gray tails whose undersides reveal a lengthwise-running, wide row of smooth scales. Slender bodies shine on short-legged, 20-toed juveniles and adults and on orange-red-chinned, red-orange-jawed breeding males even though age ultimately scours all sheen and stripes to brown.

Black-brown, four-, short-legged, shiny, slender, 20-toed bodies with five broad, lengthwise-tending pale stripes and lengthwise-turning scales under blue-gray tails troop through North American five-lined skink habitats.

Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, map of "geographic distribution of Plestiodon fasciatus," with range data from Hammerson, G.A. 2007. Plestiodon fasciatus. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 03 December 2012, @ https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/64227/12756007: 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:

male five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus), Ontario's only native lizard species, announce mating season in Petroglyphs Provincial Park, Southern Ontario, east central Canada; Wednesday, May 23, 2012, 12:42: D. Gordon E. Robertson (Dger), CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Five-lined_Skink,_Petroglyphs_PP.jpg

Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, map of "geographic distribution of Plestiodon fasciatus," with range data from Hammerson, G.A. 2007. Plestiodon fasciatus. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 03 December 2012, @ https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/64227/12756007: 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_fasciatus_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 fasciatus. -- Linnaus. Plate VII." North American Herpetology; Or, A Description of the Reptiles Inhabiting the United States. Vol. III: 45-49. Philadelphia PA: J. Dobson.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/3683018

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

Linnaeus, Carl. 1758. "40. Lacerta fasciata." Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis, Tomus I, Editio Decima, Reformata: 209. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/727120

Uetz, Peter. "Plestiodon fasciatus (Linnaeus, 1758)." Reptile Database.
Available @ http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Plestiodon&species=fasciatus&search_param=%28%28search%3D%27plestiodon+fasciatus%27%29%29