Description: The Great Plains skink is a robust ground-dwelling lizard. It has a light tan to gray ground color, with the scales on the back and sides edged in brown or black, making it look speckled. These dark markings may combine to form irregular stripes along the back and sides. The belly is plain light gray. Body scales on the sides are in oblique (slanted) rows, and this is Missouri's only lizard species with such a scale arrangement. This is the largest species of skink in the United States.

Habitat: This skink lives in open plains habitat or the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, in areas near water, e.g. irrigation ditches. In southeastern Colorado, it occurs in elevation up to about 7200 feet; in northern Colorado, only at elevations below about 4500 feet.

Range: The Great Plains skink is very common on the Great Plains, ranging from southeastern Wyoming and Nebraska (and also Fremont County, Iowa) southward to eastern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and into Mexico.

Found in these States: AZ | CO | IA | KS | MO | NE | NM | OK | TX

Diet: This lizard eats a variety of insects and spiders, especially grasshoppers, crickets, and beetles.

Reproduction: The mating season of the Great Plains skink is in April or May. The female lays between 5 and 32 eggs (on the average about 12) in early summer, which she guards until they hatch in late summer. Courtship and mating apparently take place in May. Females might not breed every year. Eggs are usually laid in a burrow under a large rock, with about 11 eggs per clutch. Females remain with their clutch from one to two months, until the eggs hatch.

Status: Listed as Least Concern in view of the large and probably relatively stable extent of occurrence, area of occupancy, number of subpopulations, and population size. No major threats are known.

Taxonomy: