Adelaide pigmy blue-tongue skink

The skink

Adelaide pigmy blue-tongue skink is a skink in the family Scincidae — Tiliqua adelaidensis.

Range and habitat

Known locations of the species extend from Kapunda in the Light River valley, about 77 kilometres (48 mi) north east of Adelaide, northwards to Peterborough, about 254 kilometres (158 mi) north of Adelaide.

Conservation efforts to maintain the species include the establishment of the Tiliqua Pygmy Bluetongue Reserve near Burra, by the Nature Foundation SA in 2010.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet

Most skinks forage in leaf litter or under cover. Burrowing species slip through sand or soil more than they climb.

In crisis

The species was previously thought to be extinct and only rediscovered in 1992. Found only in the Mid North of South Australia, T. Adelaidensis was for a time believed to be extinct. It was rediscovered in 1992, when a researcher found the remains of an adult male T. Adelaidensis in the stomach contents of a dead brown snake, near Burra.

The pygmy bluetongue is now considered to be an endangered species. The habitat and range of pygmy bluetongues is very restricted, as individuals live in old spider burrows within areas of unploughed native grasslands, that have become rare due to extensive development of cereal cropping throughout the region.

Adelaide pigmy blue-tongue skink is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Adelaide pigmy blue-tongue skink, Wikidata item Q892717. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.