“I was just poking around when I saw the little guy.”
Series note: The region’s collection of native species is under threat on several fronts, most notably from humanity’s shortsightedness. Humans aren’t giving the natural world the space it needs and deserves. We’re crowding out nonhuman life, which, in turn, makes nature less productive and us less healthy. Wild New England examines the animals and insects most at risk.
This story was originally published by ecoRI News, a publication partner of Ocean State Stories.
Despite being one of the most common lizards in the eastern United States, a five-lined skink had never been recorded in Rhode Island until five years ago.
On Earth Day 2020, Emilie Holland, an environmental scientist and a member of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey board of directors, found a Plestiodon fasciatus of uncertain origin in South County.
“I was just poking around when I saw the little guy,” she told ecoRI News. “I thought it was a salamander at first, and I grabbed it really fast. When I opened my hand, I thought it was going to be a mole salamander, but it didn’t move as fast as a mole salamander normally would.”
Holland texted University of Rhode Island herpetologist Nancy Karraker to confirm the find.
Growing to be between 5 and 8.5 inches long, including tail, with distinct brown and cream-colored stripes, skinks have blue tails as juveniles, and adult males have a reddish throat. The one Holland found was a juvenile.
The blue tail is a defense mechanism, according to Lou Perrotti, director of conservation at Roger Williams Park Zoo. He noted a predator is going to attack the brightest piece of the animal, and the lizard can drop its tail to get away.
The five-lined skink is the only lizard found in New England, even though there are about 5,000 different species of lizards worldwide, according to the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection.
The five-lined skink is listed as threatened in Connecticut, where it has been documented on bluffs bordering the Housatonic River in southwestern Litchfield County, on ledges bordering the Housatonic River in northwestern New Haven County and the Naugatuck River, and along ledges in southwestern Hartford County.
The small size and fragmented nature of skink populations leaves them vulnerable to ecological catastrophes, according to state officials.
The range of this species corresponds closely with the eastern deciduous forest. The five-lined skink is found in southwestern New England — currently, Vermont and Connecticut and historically in Massachusetts — south to northern Florida, west to Wisconsin, and in eastern parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The species is at its northeastern range limit in southwestern New England.
These lizards feed on a variety of arthropods such as spiders, crickets and beetles. Their preferred habitat includes steep, rocky areas with open ledge, patchy tree and shrub cover, and an abundance of rotten logs and loose rock slabs. These habitats are usually near moist deciduous forest.
Although five-lined skinks spend much of their time under rocks and logs, they will bask in sunny spots. Rock climbers at several sites in Connecticut have reported seeing them. These lizards are primarily terrestrial, but will climb dead trees to find insects.
In Massachusetts, while the five-lined skink was historically present in the Berkshire region and a single old record exists for New Bedford, populations are considered extirpated.
Note: Some of the species listed in each state overlap, and how often the lists are updated varies — the Rhode Island list was last updated in March 2006, Massachusetts last August, and Connecticut in January 2023. For species listed as state historical — essentially extirpated — in Rhode Island, they were included in the endangered category.
