Five Lined Skink
by Susan Rissi Tregoning
Title
Five Lined Skink
Artist
Susan Rissi Tregoning
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
A Five-lined skink that I discovered on my Heron Pond swamp hike, I think it’s a female.
Five-lined skinks prefer moist, but not wet, wooded or partially wooded areas with significant cover and abundant basking sites. These sites may include wood or brush piles, stumps, logs, rocky outcrops, loose bark, and abandoned buildings. Most five-lined skinks inhabit disturbed environments, such as forest edges, cleared areas, or burned regions, commonly called ecotone areas. Five-lined skink populations may also occur among driftwood piles on the sandy beaches of the Great Lakes. Home range size is affected by available habitat type as well as changes in seasonal food distribution, shelter, and other requirements. Five-lined skinks seek cover in rotting wood, rock crevices, vegetation or sawdust piles, or building foundations, remaining inactive during cold winter months.
Copyright 2018 Susan Rissi Tregoning
Adult five-lined skinks are characterized by five yellow to cream colored stripes of equal width running dorsally and laterally from the snout to tail. These stripes, separated by darker lines, may lighten with age, eventually disappearing in older males. The typical black background color of juveniles and young adult females also fades with maturation to a brown, gray, or olive hue in adults. The body is slender and elongate lacking a distinct neck or narrowing before the wedge-shaped head. The small limbs are pentadactyl with well-developed toes and claws. Hatchlings, 5 to 6.4 cm in length, possess bright blue tails and distinct white or yellow stripes on a black background. Tail color dulls with age, and is more commonly retained in females than males, which display gray tails as adults. Although no sexual difference in body length is apparent, clear sexual dimorphism of head size and coloration exists among five-lines skinks. In males the development of a widened head and reddish orange coloration of the snout and jaws intensifies during the spring breeding sea
Uploaded
May 2nd, 2018
Statistics
Viewed 1,734 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/18/2024 at 10:25 PM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet