Five Lined Skink

Description:

The American Five-lined Skink is small to medium sized, growing to about 12.5 to 21.5 centimetres (4.9 to 8.5 in) total length. Young Five-lined Skinks are dark brown to black with five distinctive white to yellowish stripes running along the body and a bright blue tail. The blue color fades to light blue with age, and the stripes also may slowly disappear. The dark brown color fades, too, and older individuals are often uniformly brownish. The Southeastern Five-lined Skink, P. inexpectatus, of the Southeastern United States is very similar to this species and there is some overlap in range. The two species can be distinguished by their scales.[1] The Broad-headed Skink, P. laticeps, is similar, and may be difficult to distinguish from P. fasciatus. The former species usually lacks the two enlarged postlabial scales characteristic of P. fasciatus (Palmer et al., 1995). Adult male Broad-headed skinks, with their large size and swollen red head, are readily distinguished from P. fasciatus (Beane, 2005).

Habitat:

The range of the Five-lined Skink extends in the north to southern Ontario, Michigan and eastern New York. The western border is in Minnesota, Missouri and eastern Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Florida, and Texas. These skinks tend to be most abundant on the coastal plain in the southeastern United States and along the Gulf Coast. They have now been seen in increasing numbers in the northern Chesapeake Bay Region of Maryland particularly along the shores of the Elk River.[citation needed] They are listed as "special concern" in Ontario by COSEWIC,[2] and it is illegal to remove skinks from their habitats in Canada. Skinks are at the extreme edge of their habitat range in Canada, which makes it an area of special interest to ecologists, as extreme conditions place unique evolutionary pressures upon species. Five-lined Skinks have split into two phylogenetically-distinct populations in this edge habitat: the Carolinian population, also present in the United States, ends around Point Pelee National Park in southern Ontario. The St. Lawrence / Great Lakes population resides in the Ottawa Valley in eastern Ontario and tends to be more tolerant to sparse or rocky conditions than its sister subspecies.[3] Five-lined Skinks are ground-dwelling animals. They prefer moist, partially wooded habitat that provides ample cover or inside walls of buildings as well as sites to bask in the sun. They can also be found in broken, rocky areas at the northern edge of their habitat