Reptilia · Squamata
Plestiodon callicephalusBocourt, 1879
Mountain Skink
Photograph by Sue Carnahan, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A day-active, meat-eating skink from the Nearctic region, reaching 76 mm snout to vent.
Once published as Eumeces callicephalus — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Plestiodon
- Grows to
- 76mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives
- Saxicolous, terrestrial
Longer than 55% of all skinks anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 24 to 500 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
38 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2007
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 76mm3 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 64mm2.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 64mm2.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 23.39mm0.9 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 23.4mm0.9 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 8.99g0.32 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.34g0.01 oz
max 76 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016)
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Saxicolous, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Rocky, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Coniferous Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 4–11months
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2330m
- Range size
- 174,371km²
- Density
- 16.7per hectare
Arthropods, one female ate her own hatchling (Rorabaugh and Lemos-Espinal 2016), arthropods (Stebbins and McGinnis 2018)
Active (Hernandez-Salinas et al. 2023)
e.g., Cruz-Saenz et al. 2011
Leaf litter (Hardy and McDiarmid 1969, Jones and Lovich 2009, Lemos-Espinal et al. 2013), leaf litter and saxicolous (Cruz-Saenz et al. 2011), terrestrial (Rorabaugh and Lemos-Espinal 2016)
260-2330 (Rorabaugh and Lemos-Espinal 2016), near sea level to 1980 (Stebbins and McGinnis 2018), 0-2000 (Murphy 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Mixed
- Average clutch
- 5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 3–9eggs
- Mean clutch
- 4–6eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
Oviparous, but one report of live bearing (Jones and Lovich 2009, Rorabaugh and Lemos-Espinal 2016), both (Brennan and Holycross 2009, Stebbins and McGinnis 2018), Viviparous (Goldberg 2015, Lemos-Espinal et al. 2013), oviparous (Penilla-Juarez et al. 2012), Oviparous, further investigation required to determine bimodality and test for speciation (Camilla Whittington & James Van Dyke, pers comm. July 2021)
3-9 (Goldberg 2015), 3 & 7 (Cruz-Saenz et al. 2011, n=2), 4 (Lemos-Espinal et al. 2013), 3-6 (Rorabaugh and Lemos-Espinal 2016), 3 & 6 in the literature, 6 eggs in all 3 in current work (Penilla-Juarez et al. 2012), 3-6 (Murphy 2018)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Bocourt
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1879
- Type locality
- Mexico
Keeping one
12 in × 12 in × 7.5 in(30 × 30 × 19 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
Lives on rock, so stable hard surfaces and basking ledges suit it.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length of 3 in (76 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Mountain Skink. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 9 g, the heaviest recorded for Mountain Skink — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Longest recorded life
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Clutches in a year
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Scincidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Plestiodon callicephalus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/plestiodon-callicephalus
@misc{plestiodon_callicephalus_2026,
title = {Plestiodon callicephalus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/plestiodon-callicephalus}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.