Black-Brown Southeastern Five-Lined Skink: Blue-Gray Tail, Four Legs

Summary: North American southeastern five-lined skink habitats get dark bodies with blue-gray tails, five lengthwise, light, thin stripes and four five-toed legs.

young southeastern five-lined skinks (Plestiodon inexpectatus): National Park Service (NPS), Public Domain, via NPS Great Smoky Mountains National Park

North American southeastern five-lined skink habitats appear in Gulf and southeastern coastal piedmont and plain distribution ranges from Maryland and Virginia, through the Florida Keys, eastern Tennessee, southeastern Kentucky and everywhere in-between.

Southeastern five-lined skinks bear their common name for biogeography, for broad banding from neck through tail and for Scincidae family membership with the world's scincid lizards. The scientific name Plestiodon inexpectatus concentrates upon the many teeth and the unexpected discovery that respectively characterize the first, genus name and the second, species name. Scientific designations draw upon descriptions in 1932 by Edward Harrison Taylor (April 23, 1889-June 16, 1978), zoology department head at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

Southeastern five-lined skink life cycles expect dry niches with semi-permanent and temporary fresh water, sparse herbaceous vegetation and trees for climbing and moist grasslands and woodlands.

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

Southeastern five-lined skinks go from building cracks, rock crevices and woody fissures to grab the morning sun's rays on fallen trunks and rotting logs and stumps. 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 crows, foxes, hawks, kestrels, moles, opossums, raccoons, shrews, shrikes, snakes and striped skunks jeopardize North American southeastern five-lined skink habitats.

Southeastern five-lined skinks know angry confrontations among rival males, brief courtships and internal fertilizations of calcium carbonate-shelled eggs that summer's brooding females keep laying in June.

Brooding mothers-to-be lace themselves around successive 6- to 12-egg clutches since each brooded incubation lasts two months and leads to bright-bodied, little adult-like hatchlings in August. Juveniles manifest bold, brilliant stripes from neck to tail and bright blue or purple tails 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 southeastern five-lined skink habitats offer season's coldest temperature ranges, north to southward, from 0 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 17.77 to 1.66 degrees Celsius).

Cypress heads, dry and wet pine flatwoods, lowland pines, mixed hardwood-pine forests, ridgetops, sandy scrublands, seashore islands and suburban and urban woodlots protect southeastern five-lined skinks.

Three to 3.5 inches (7.62 to 8.89 centimeters) and 5.5 to 8.5 inches (13.97 to 21.59 centimeters) respectively queue as snout-vent (excrementary opening) and total lengths. Adults reveal black or brown bodies with five light, narrow stripes from neck to long tail, four five-clawed, five-toed short legs, smooth scales and blue-gray tails. Age ultimately scours the striking sheen of streamlined stripes down to an overall brown sheen even though adult males always show red-orange heads during mating seasons.

North American southeastern five-lined skink habitats tether black-brown, five-striped, four-legged, smooth-scaled, 20-toed bodies, without lengthwise-tending, scaly rows under blue-gray tails, to grasslands, seasonal wetlands and woodlands.

Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, map of "geographic distribution of Plestiodon inexpectatus, syn. Eumeces inexpectatus," with range data from Hammerson, G.A. 2007. Plestiodon inexpectatus. 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/64229/12756436: 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:

young southeastern five-lined skinks (Plestiodon inexpectatus): National Park Service (NPS), Public Domain, via NPS Great Smoky Mountains National Park @ https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/reptiles.htm

Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, map of "geographic distribution of Plestiodon inexpectatus, syn. Eumeces inexpectatus," with range data from Hammerson, G.A. 2007. Plestiodon inexpectatus. 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/64229/12756436: 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_inexpectatus_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 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

Taylor, Edward H. May 1932. "Eumeces inexpectatus: A New American Lizard of the Family Scincidae." University of Kansas Science Bulletin, vol. XX, part 2, no. 13 (May 1932): 251-259; Plate XVII. Lawrence KS: University of Kansas.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4395944
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/universityofkans20univ#page/251/mode/1up

Uetz, Peter. "Plestiodon inexpectatus (Taylor, 1932)." Reptile Database.
Available @ http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Plestiodon&species=inexpectatus&search_param=%28%28search%3D%27Plestiodon+inexpectatus%27%29%29