Peninsula Mole Skink (Plestiodon egregius onocrepis)
Description: A variable race of P.egregius characterized by having a brown, red, orange, yellow, pinkish, or lavender tail in conjunction with dorsolateral light stripes that widen or diverge or both.
Habitat: Habitats include coastal dunes, sand pine scrub, longleaf pine-turkey oak woods, and xeric hammocks. This lizard is mostly fossorial; often under surface litter, also in pocket gopher burrows and mounds, burrowing beetle mounds; it occurs in greatest numbers where soil is sandy or gravelly and dry. It also occurs under rocks and tidal wrack on beaches. Eggs are laid in a cavity dug in sandy soil, several inches to 6 feet below the surface.
Range: Florida peninsula. Type locality: “from Dummet's Plantation (=Dummett's Grove, near Allenhurst on Merritt I., Brevard County, Florida”.
Found in these States:
FL
Diet: Eats crickets, spiders, and other small arthropods.
Reproduction: Mole skinks reach sexual maturity after one year. They mate in winter; the female lays three to seven eggs in spring in a shallow nest cavity less than 12 inches below the surface. The eggs incubate for 31 to 51 days, during which time the female tends the nest.
Status: Listed as Least Concern because overall the extent of occurrence, area of occupancy, number of subpopulations, and population size are fairly large and probably have not declined at a rate that would qualify the species for any of the threatened categories.
»» Kingdom: Animalia - Animals
»» Phylum: Chordata - Chordates
»» Subphylum: Vertebrata - Vertebrates
»» Class: Reptilia - Reptiles
»» Order: Squamata - Lizards
»» Family: Scincidae - Skinks
»» Genus: Plestiodon
»» Species: Plestiodon egregius -Mole Skink
»» Subspecies: Plestiodon egregius onocrepis - Peninsula Mole Skink
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Plestiodon egregius", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0. Content may have been omitted from the original, but no content has been changed or extended.
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