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with dark brown lateral band softened with a light hue towards it's main body. Has a orange red markings at the side of its throat. Around 6-7 inches including its tail.
lakeside forest Kayangan, Coron Island, Palawan
Spotted on Oct 3, 2014
Submitted on Oct 15, 2014
1 Comment
Hello. This is an interesting spotting. As far as I can find, Acritoscincus (the genus in your reference link) is from southern Australia only. I have not found it, or its synonym Bassiana, mentioned for anywhere else EXCEPT in (variations of) your reference (for example http://scienceray.com/biology/zoology/ho... ) where it concludes that it also occurs in the Palawan group because it looks like the ones in Australia. To me this raises a caution flag! This gets a bit technical, but here is what I have found so far...Given that there are many islands between southern Australia and Palawan, yet the genus does not appear to be mentioned for any of them. Neither is Acritoscincus/Bassiana found listed in the 2012 "Philippine Reptiles and Their Distribution" list issued by the Philippines Biodiversity Management Bureau http://www.bmb.gov.ph/index.php?option=c... nor are they found in the list compiles by http://philbreo.lifedesks.org/taxa . I will keep my eye out for this to perhaps investigate further, but please note that there are many many cases of organisms of a related group (for example, skinks) looking very similar, but not being closely related at the "species leve"l. I think your species is from another genus, possibly Eutropis.