Prairie Skink (Plestiodon septentrionalis)
Description: The prairie skink is a small lizard, reaching a total length (body + tail) of about 13 to 22 cm (5 to nearly 9 inches). Adult prairie skinks are brown or tan on the back and darker on the sides and have several thin lighter stripes along the sides and the back. Juveniles have bright blue tails, the color of which fades when they mature.
Habitat: The prairie skink lives in sandy habitat or open grasslands with loose soil, preferably with some rocks providing shelter and places to bask in the sun, and close to a water source.
Range: The ranges of the two subspecies are disjunct. The range of the northern subspecies extends from eastern North Dakota and Minnesota south to central Kansas. A small isolated population lives in southwestern Manitoba in Canada—it is the only lizard in Manitoba and is one of only seven lizard species to occur in Canada; the northern prairie skink is protected in Canada. The southern subspecies occurs in Oklahoma and Texas.
Diet: They feed on small invertebrates, preferring spiders, crickets, and grasshoppers, but avoiding ants.
Reproduction: Clutch size is about 4-18; averages 7-9 in Minnesota, 8 in Kansas, 11 in Nebraska, 9 in Texas; larger females produce larger clutches. Eggs hatch in 1-2 months (by mid-July in Iowa). Sexually mature in 2 years. Female attends eggs until shortly after hatching.
Status: Listed as Least Concern in view of its wide distribution, tolerance of a degree of habitat modification, presumed large population, and because it is unlikely to be declining fast enough to qualify for listing in a more threatened category.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Prairie Skink", 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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