Acontias gracilicauda
Thin-tailed Legless Skink
Alternative Names
Slendertail Lance Skink (English)
Dunstert Pootlose Gladde Akkedis (Afrikaans)
Dunstert pootlose skink (Afrikaans)
Species: Acontias gracilicauda Essex, 1925
Distribution: Lesotho; South Africa.
Distribution extended: Record from Lesotho is known from a single record (Ambrose, 2006).
Type Locality: “Grahamstown”
Notes: “Grahamstown” is now known as Makhanda, a small town in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.
Habitat: Savanna and Grasslands.
Habitat extended:
Natural History: Fossorial skink, can be found underneath rocks and other objects. Found active on the surface on humid nights. They are primarily nocturnal and feed on insects and likely other arthropods. This species can be locally abundant in certain habitats.
Biology: Viviparous
Conservation Status: According to the IUCN Red List, this species is classified as "Least Concern," indicating that it is not currently considered to be at high risk of extinction.
Additional reading
The Reptile Database - (See here)
IUCN Red List - (See here)
iNaturalist - (See here)
LITERATURE
Ambrose D. 2006. Lesotho Annotated Bibliography Section 166: Reptiles Including Annotated Checklist. Mamhlongo Productions, Roma. pp 13.
Bates MF. 1996. New reptile distribution records for the Free State province of South Africa: appendix 1. Navorsinge van die Nasionale Museum: Researches of the National Museum 12(1): 28-43.
Branch WR, Braack HH. 1987. Reptiles and amphibians of the Addo Elephant National Park. Koedoe 30(1): 61-111.
Busschau T, Conradie W, Jordaan A, Daniels SR. 2017. Unmasking evolutionary diversity among two closely related South African legless skink species (Acontinae: Acontias) using molecular data. Zoology 121: 72-82.
Daniels SR, Heideman N, Hendricks M, Willson B. 2002. A molecular phylogeny for the South African limbless lizard taxa of the subfamily Acontinae (Sauria: Scincidae) with special emphasis on relationships within Acontias. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 24(2): 315-323.
Daniels SR, Heideman NJ, Hendricks MG, Mokone ME, Crandall KA. 2005. Unraveling evolutionary lineages in the limbless fossorial skink genus Acontias (Sauria: Scincidae): are subspecies equivalent systematic units?. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 34(3): 645-654.
Daniels SR, Heideman NJ, Hendricks MG, Crandall KA. 2006. Taxonomic subdivisions within the fossorial skink subfamily Acontinae (Squamata: Scincidae) reconsidered: a multilocus perspective. Zoologica Scripta 35(4): 353-362.
De Waal, S. W. P. (1977). The Squamata (Reptilia) of the Orange Free State, South Africa (Doctoral dissertation).
Heideman, N. J. L., Daniels, S. R., Mashinini, P. L., Mokone, M. E., Thibedi, M. L., Hendricke, M. G. J., ... & Douglas, R. M. (2008). Sexual dimorphism in the African legless skink subfamily Acontiinae (Reptilia: Scincidae). African Zoology, 43(2), 192-201.
Hewitt, J. (1938). Descriptions of new forms of the genus Acontias Lin. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 26(1), 39-48.
Essex, R. (1925). Descriptions of two new species of the genus Acontias and notes on some other lizards found in the Cape Province. Rec. Albany Mus, 3(4), 332-342.
Jacobsen, N. H. G. (1989). A herpetological survey of the Transvaal (Doctoral dissertation).
Jacobsen, N. (1978). Colloquial names for southern African reptiles and amphibians. The Journal of the Herpetological Association of Africa, 18(1), 7-13.
Lamb T, Biswas S, Bauer AM. 2010. A phylogenetic reassessment of African fossorial skinks in the subfamily Acontinae (Squamata: Scincidae): evidence for parallelism and polyphyly. Zootaxa 2657(1): 33-46.
Maritz B, Alexander GJ. 2009. Breaking ground: quantitative fossorial herpetofaunal ecology in South Africa. African Journal of Herpetology 58(1): 1-14.
Reeves, B., Brooke, C. F., Venter, J. A., & Conradie, W. C. (2022). The Reptiles and Amphibians of the Mpofu-Fort Fordyce Nature Reserve Complex in the Winterberg Mountains, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. African Journal of Wildlife Research, 52(1), 134-145.
Zhao, Z., Conradie, W., Pietersen, D. W., Jordaan, A., Nicolau, G., Edwards, S., ... & Heideman, N. (2023). Diversification of the African legless skinks in the subfamily Acontinae (Family Scincidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 182, 107747.