Critically Endangered
Bermuda skink
Plestiodon longirostris
The Bermuda skink, longnose skink, or (Bermuda) rock lizard is a critically endangered species and the only endemic land-living vertebrate of Bermuda.
Appearance
Adult Bermuda skinks (also known as "rock lizards") have dark brown or black backs and are pinkish or light gray on the underside. Juveniles are lighter in color and have black stripes running along the sides of their bodies, that fade with age. It is a relatively small skink (a kind of lizard): adults reach an average snout-to-vent length of about 8 cm (3.1 in).
Range and habitat
The species occurs only in Bermuda, and exists mainly on some of the smaller islands and nature reserves on the mainland, where the populations are fragmented into isolated pockets. The Bermuda skink, longnose skink, or (Bermuda) rock lizard is a critically endangered species and the only endemic land-living vertebrate of Bermuda.
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 Bermuda skink has been listed on the IUCN Red List as critically endangered. It is threatened primarily by habitat destruction, predators introduced by humans (such as cats, rats, American crows, chickens, great kiskadees, yellow-crowned night herons, cane toads and anoles), as well as by human litter: the Bermuda skink has tiny claws on its feet, but no friction pads, and when it gets trapped in cast-away empty glass bottles or soda cans, it cannot climb out and thus starves or dies of heat stress or dehydration.
Bermuda skink is Critically 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 Bermuda skink, Wikidata item Q137675. 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.
