Eastern Blue-tongued Skink (Tiliqua scincoides) Fact Sheet: Taxonomy & History

Taxonomy

• Family Scincidae (Wilson and Swan 2017)
  • Abundant and diverse group
    • More than 435 species recognized
  • Widely distributed
    • Common on all continents, except Antarctica
    • Also found on remote oceanic islands
  • Includes egg-laying and live-bearing species
  • Most skink species eat invertebrates
    • Larger skinks omnivorous
  • Most (but not all) skink species have:
    • Four limbs, each with five toes
    • Shiny, overlapping body scales
    • A tail that can be shed and regrown
• Genus Tiliqua (Wilson and Swan 2017, and as noted)
  • Large, robust-bodied lizards
    • Largest members of Scincidae (Abbate et al. 2009)
  • About 6-7 species (Abbate et al. 2009)
  • Found throughout Australia; one species in New Guinea
  • Adapt well to urban areas
  • Most diurnal (Cogger 2014)
  • Slow-moving
  • In defense, inflate body, hiss, and protrude flat blue tongue
  • Omnivorous
  • Live-bearing
  • Shared physical characteristics
    • Toes of equal length
    • Ear opening present
    • Parietal scales separated
    • Row of scales between eye and upper lip
    • Lower eyelid moveable
      • No transparent disc
• Tiliqua scincoides
  • Subspecies (Cogger 2014; Samantha Price-Rees, personal communication, 2018)
    • T. s. chimaerea (Tanibar Islands, Indonesia)
    • T. s. intermedia (northern Australia)
    • T. s. scincoides (southern and eastern Australia)
  • Some taxonomy studies consider populations in Indonesia to be a separate subspecies (Shea 1992; Hitz et al. 2004)
    • T. s. chimaerea

Nomenclature

• Genus: Tiliqua
  • No known meaning (Abbate et al. 2009)
• Species: T. scincoides
  • Refers to skinks, historically spelled “scinc” (White 1790)
• Common name: skink
  • From the Greek skinkos (Grove 1981)

Synonyms

(Shea 2004a, and as noted)

• Cyclodus and Scincus (Shaw 1992)
  • Genera synonyms used in the early- to mid-1800s
• Lacerta scincoides (Hunter, 1790)
• Scincus crotaphomelas (Lacépède, 1804)
• Scincus tuberculatus (Merrem, 1820)
• Tiliqua whitii (J.E. Gray, 1831)
• Cyclodus Boddaertti (in part) (Duméril & Bibron, 1839)
• Lacerta variegata (Cunningham, 1925)
• Tiliqua macroscincoides (Wells & Willington, 1985)

Common names

• Common, eastern, or northern blue-tongue(d) skink or lizard; “blue-tongues” (English) (Wilson and Swan 2017)
• Gewöhnliche blauzunge; Blauzungenskink; Gemeiner Blauzungenskink; Nördliche blauzunge (German) (Wrobel 2004; CITES 2018)
• Scinque d’Australie à langue bleue; scinque à langue bleue (French) (Wrobel 2004)
• Tiliqua della lingua azzurra; scinco (Italian) (Wrobel 2004)
• Australisk blåtunga; australiensisk blåtungeskink (Swedish) (CITES 2018)

Fossil history and evolutionary relationships of Tiliqua

• Originated in Australia during the early Miocene or Eocene (Shaw 1992; Shea and Hutchinson 1992)
• Several Tiliqua fossils reported from Pleistocene deposits (Shea and Hutchinson 1992)
• Closely related to Cyclodomorphus (Shaw 1992; Pyron et al. 2013)

Closest known extant relatives of Tiliqua scincoides

• T. gigas, Indonesian blue-tongued skink (Shaw 1992; Pyron et al. 2013)
• T. nigrolutea, blotched blue-tongued skink (Pyron et al. 2013)

History

• 1787: Early preserved specimens reach Europe (Shea 2004b)
• 1790: First scientific description by John Hunter (thought to have been edited by George Shaw) (White 1790; also see Shea 1993)
  • First Australian reptile to be named (Shea 1993)
    • Referred to as “scincoid, or skinc-formed lizard, Lacerta scincoides”
  • First report of herbivory in large skinks (Shea 1993)
    • Predated Charles Darwin’s observations by nearly 50 years
• Collected during early European voyages to Australia and the Indo-Pacific (Shea 2004b)

Culture and folklore

(Hauschild 2004)

• Blue-tongued skinks (Tiliqua) are important in the traditional cultures of Australia
• Aboriginal tales
  • A sick, old man asks a lizard to fetch ink from a squid to cure him from illness (see Fig. 1 in Hauschild 2004)
    • Lizard could only carry it in his mouth, turning his tongue blue
    • Ran so fast that his legs wore down, making them short
• Food preparation
  • Roasted on stick over an open fire

Books

• Selected non-fiction
  • Blue-tongued Skinks: contributions to Tiliqua and Cyclodomorphus — Robert Hitz, Glenn Shea, Andree Handschild, Klaus Heale, and Heiko Werning (2004)

Poetry

• “The Lizards” from The Dosser in Springtime — Douglas Stewart

Art

• Early illustrations and paintings
  • The Skinc-formed Lizard — Sarah Stone (1790)
  • Scientific illustrations compiled by Albert Gunther (see p. 96-97, Stanbury and Phipps 1980)

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Reptilia (Laurenti, 1768) — reptiles

Order: Squamata (Oppel, 1811) — lizards, snakes, serpents

Family: Scincidae — skinks

Genus: Tiliqua (Gray, 1825) — blue-tongued skinks

Species: Tiliqua scincoides (Hunter*, 1790) — eastern blue-tongued skink

Subspecies: T. s. chimaerea (Tanibar Islands, Indonesia)

Subspecies: T. s. intermedia (northern Australia) (Mitchell, 1955)

Subspecies: T. s. scincoides (southern and eastern Australia) (Hunter*, 1790)

Sources: Cogger (2014); Integrated Taxonomic Information System (2017), Wilson and Swan (2017); Samantha Price-Rees, personal communication, 2018

*Species description is commonly attributed to White or Shaw, but White was the publisher and Shaw was an editor of Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales (1790). Hunter was the author (see Shea [1993]). Today, the citation of White (1790) for the species description is still used in some authoritative references (e.g., Cogger 2014; IUCN Red List) but not others (e.g., Hitz et al. 2004).

A 1790 illustration of an eastern blue-tongued skink.

"The Scincoid, or Skinc-formed Lizard, Lacerta scincoides." Plate 30 in John White's 1790 book, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales.

Image credit: Made available by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Public domain.