Endangered
Canterbury spotted skink
Oligosoma lineoocellatum
Canterbury spotted skink is one of a species complex of several related spotted skink species from New Zealand.
Appearance
The Canterbury spotted skink is a large, eye-catching skink with a snout-vent length reaching up to 107mm. Individuals typically have an olive-green, brown or brown-grey dorsal (upper side) surface with light and dark coloured spots (ocelli) that extend almost to the tail tip. The lateral (side) surface exhibits a dark brown or brown-black lateral band with specks and white edges notched, extending from the front of the eyes to the tail tip.
Individuals have dark brown eyes with an intact tail longer than the snout-vent length. The uniformly grey underside, the greater ratio of snout-vent length to head-width and the different geographic locations differentiate the Canterbury spotted skink from the Northern spotted skink.
Range and habitat
The Canterbury spotted skink is an endemic species of skink only found in the Canterbury region of New Zealand. This distribution spreads from Mount Grey in the north, Banks Peninsula in the east, and the Rangitata River in the south. O. Lineoocellatum can be found in various environments among them lowland, coastal, montane/subalpine and alpine.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
The Canterbury spotted skink is diurnal meaning it is active during the day. Breeding occurs once per year with pregnancies lasting 4–5 months ending between February and March.
Research has been done on Oligosoma grande where observations suggested mating was polygynous (one male with multiple females) even so, genetic studies of this species found that over one breeding season, both males and females had more than one partner using a promiscuous mating system.
In crisis
Canterbury spotted 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 Canterbury spotted skink, Wikidata item Q5087209. 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.
