Clark and Hall (1970) demonstrated that aggressive adult males are inhibited from attacking individual lizards with blue tails and suggested the blue tail was evolved for this purpose. Juveniles and young adults have bright blue tails until their second year of life. Predators of the Five-lined Skink include hawks, opossums, armadillos, skunks, moles, shrews, snakes, and other larger lizards. The eggs hatch within one to two months, depending on available moisture and prevailing temperatures.įive-lined Skinks are carnivorous, eating spiders, roaches, crickets, locusts, small grasshoppers, moths, beetles, snails, smaller lizards, and newborn mice. Each female remains in her nest with the eggs to protect them. Females lay only one clutch of 4 to 14 eggs per year (Fitch, 1985), averaging eight or nine in number. At this time, they hide beneath rocks or in rotten logs and stumps and dig nests. Copulation lasts about five minutes.A few days after copulation, females become hostile to males and by May or June are extremely secretive. A male pursues a female, bites and holds her loose shoulder skin, and bends beneath her tail until their cloacae meet. Male Five-lined Skinks search for and find females by sight and smell but exhibit no courtship behavior. The orange-red head of males permits quick sex recognition. At this time, the males develop bright orange-red heads and are extremely aggressive, continually fighting with other males. In the spring, about three weeks after emerging from winter inactivity, these lizards become sexually active. During the winter, this species burrows beneath the ground or retreats into a burrow to avoid cold temperatures. At night, this lizard retires beneath rocks and logs. The Five-lined Skink is active diurnally in a home range that varies 30-90 feet in diameter, but it is not territorial. However, Clarke (1958) found them active in March at an air temperature as low as 40☏ in Osage County. This reptile is generally active from April to September at air temperatures from 60° to 90☏. The Five-lined Skink prefers a humid environment and obtains water by lapping dew from plant leaves. It is also quite abundant around sawmills or artificial piles of rocks and logs. A patchy forest leaf-cover is preferred this species basks in spots where the sun reaches the ground. This lizard lives in open, rocky, well-drained, cut-over forests in upland areas. This is the maximum length throughout the range (Powell et al., 2016).įitch (1954) studied the Five-lined Skink in Kansas, and much of the information known from Kansas is based on his observations. Murrow, James Markley, and Matt Singer on 30 April 1998. The largest specimen from Kansas is a male (KU 288632) from Wyandotte County with unknown snout-vent length and a total length of 222 mm (8½ inches) collected by Daniel G. One of the 22 specimens had 5 upper labials on each side.Īdults normally 125-178 mm (5-7 inches) in total length. (2022) found that this character held for 95% (21 of 22) of the Kansas specimens purportedly identified to species by mtDNA. Common Five-lined skinks typically have four pre-subocular scales on each side of the head. This species closely resembles the Broad-headed Skink and can usually only be differentiated by examination of the head scales and comparing size. The juveniles are always striped and have bright blue tails. Adult males grow slightly larger than females. During the breeding season, the heads of males turn orange-red. Older males are uniform olive or tan and lack stripes. Older females are brownish the yellow stripes may fade to brown or gray, and the blue tail becomes gray. Young adults are black, with yellow stripes on the back, sides, and head, and have a bright blue tail. This species exhibits different colors at various stages in its adult life. The Five-lined Skink is characterized by four limbs, an ear opening on each side of the head, flat, smooth, shiny scales covering the body, five yellow stripes on the back and sides, two yellow stripes on the head, and a fifth scale (counting back from the nose) on the upper lip which extends up to the edge of the eye.
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