North American Coal Skink: Side-Banded, Striped Brown-Olive-Tan Body

Summary: Rocky, wooded North American coal skink habitats get brown, sleek bodies dark and pale side-stripes, long tails, no back or head stripes and tiny legs.

The lack of a center stripe distinguishes the coal skink (Plestiodon anthracinus): Shelly Cox @MObugs, via Twitter May 15, 2015

North American coal skink habitats afford distribution ranges from Appalachian New York through Georgia, from panhandle Florida through eastern Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, western Arkansas and southern Missouri and in southernmost Ohio.

Coal skinks bear their common name for northern biogeographies in Appalachian New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina and for Scincidae family membership. They carry the species, the northern subspecies and the southern subspecies names Plestiodon anthracinus, Plestiodon anthracinus anthracinus and Plestiodon anthracinus pluvialis (most teeth, coaly [sides], rainy). Descriptions in 1850 by Spencer Fullerton Baird (Feb. 3, 1823-Aug. 19, 1887) and in 1880 by Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840-April 12, 1897) dominate taxonomies.

Coal skink life cycles expect damp, leaf-littered deciduous woodlands, mixed oak-pine forests and wooded hillsides with clear, rocky-bottomed streams, limestone ledges, rocky bluffs and sandstone slabs.

Coal skinks fit into related broad-headed, five-lined, four-lined, Gilbert's, Great Plains, ground, many-lined, mole, prairie, sand, southeastern five-lined and western skinks variously mating January through August.

Coal skinks go, as daytime predators of 29.3- to 98.42-foot (9- to 30-meter) home ranges after cliffside, crawling and slow-flying, ground-level, near-ground-level, streamside and woodland invertebrates. They harry with sharp-toothed jaws domesticated, human or wild predators that handle them or hasten to shallow waters to hide under creek-, spring- or stream-bed rocks. Oval, thick tongues with shallow-notched tips issue between hisses from strong jaws and fracture lines impel shattered, writhing tail tips at competitors, enemies, intruders and rivals.

Agro-industrialists, breeders, collectors, polluters and predatory foxes, raccoons, raptors, skunks and snakes jeopardize the oak-jumbled, pine-jumbled creeks, springs and streams in North American coal skink habitats.

Northern and southern coal skinks know Maytime courtships before internal fertilizations of calcium carbonate-shelled eggs that females keep laying as summertime clutches in June and July.

Mothers-to-be lay clutches of 4 to 11 eggs for brooded incubations that last four to five weeks and that lead to blue-tailed, 2-inch- (5-centimeter-) long hatchlings. Northern hatchlings maintain the mature subspecies' two white-yellow stripes, from head to tail, on each side even though southern hatchlings manifest faint- or non-striped black bodies. 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 coal skink habitats offer season-coldest temperature ranges, north to southward, from minus 25 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31.66 to minus 6.66 degrees Celsius).

Leaf litter in conifer and hardwood trees, loose stones in limestone and sandstone outcroppings and rock-edged, rocky-bottomed waters promote and protect northern and southern coal skinks.

Five to 7 inches (13 to 17.8 centimeters) and 2.24 to 2.8 inches (5.7 to 7.11 centimeters) queue up as total and snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths. Adults reveal brown, olive-brown or tan bodies with one dark side-stripe two to four scale rows wide amid one thin white-yellow lower stripe and one upper. Northern and southern coal skinks show no stripes down the midline of the back or on their heads even though some breeding males sustain red-sided heads.

Brown-olive-tan, cylindrical, day-active, long-tailed, short-legged, smooth-scaled bodies with black-banded, unstriped heads and white-yellow-striped sides team up with rocky, wooded wetlands in North American coal skink habitats.

Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, map of "geographic distribution of Plestiodon anthracinus," with range data from Hammerson, G.A. 2007. Plestiodon anthracinus. 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/64220/12754566: 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:

The lack of a center stripe distinguishes the coal skink (Plestiodon anthracinus): Shelly Cox @MObugs, via Twitter May 15, 2015, @ https://twitter.com/MObugs/status/599314552925196288

Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, map of "geographic distribution of Plestiodon anthracinus," with range data from Hammerson, G.A. 2007. Plestiodon anthracinus. 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/64220/12754566: 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_anthracinus_distribution.png

For further information:

Baird, Spencer F. 1849. "Descriptions of Four New Species of North American Salamanders, and One New Species of Scink: Plestiodon anthracinus, Baird." In "Art. XXIII. -- Revision of the North American Tailed-Batrachia, With Descriptions of New Genera and Species." Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, vol. I (second series), part IV (January 1850): 294. Philadelphia PA: Printed for The Academy by Merrihew & Thompson, 1847-1850.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/35780384
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/journalofacademy01acad#page/294/mode/1up

Cope, Edward D. 1880. "On the Zoological Position of Texas: Eumeces pluvialis sp. nov." Bulletin of the United States National Museum, no. 17: 19. Washington DC: Government Printing Office.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/7529346
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/bulletinunitedst171880unit#page/19/mode/1up

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.

Roberts, Kory (kaptainkory). 3 January 2007. "Southern Coal Skink (Plestiodon anthracinus pluvialis)." Herps of Arkansas > Lizards.
Available @ http://www.herpsofarkansas.com/Lizard/PlestiodonAnthracinus

Shelly Cox ‏@MObugs. 15 May 2015. "Coal skink (Plestiodon anthracinus) eating harvestman. #Arkansaswildlife." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/MObugs/status/599314552925196288

TrailVistas ‏@trailvistas. 8 June 2012. "Saw a Coal Skink while hiking the rock slide below Hawk Rock. He posed for a second between rocks then skittered away." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/trailvistas/status/211190654674534402

Uetz, Peter. "Plestiodon anthracinus (Baird, 1849)." Reptile Database.
Available @ http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Plestiodon&species=anthracinus&search_param=%28%28search%3D%27Plestiodon+anthracinus%27%29%29