tropicbreeze
Active Member
Can anyone offer an ID on this Carlia? It was in the river bed of the Upper South Alligator River (dry season) in leaf litter. Thanks.
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Carlia Skink NT ID
- Thread starter tropicbreeze
- Start date
Hi @tropicbreeze. Carlia is yet another genus in a state of flux. They did a good job of sorting out and delineating the east coast species several years ago. Since then not a lot of work has been done on the more westerly ones as far as I know. Two new species were delineated from existing species in northern WA extending into the NT in 2017. Anything beyond that I would not be aware of. I’d love to pick David Knowles’ brain on this because I know how much time he spent researching these critters in the lab and in the field prior to publishing the book he did with Steve Wilson. Unfortunately I have not seen Dave for several years so I feel that would not be appropriate. One thing I can tell you about ID’ing Carlia species is that they have very limited specific physical attributes that can be used, such as scale keels, ear lobules and head plates.
It seems to me that you photographed three different skinks - please let me know if that is the case. Irrespective, I suspect that there are two different species involved here. I have an idea of what these may be, but need to do further research to confirm that if I can. Unfortunately all my field guides are still packed up at the moment and that severely restricts the quality of information I would normally have ready access to.
It seems to me that you photographed three different skinks - please let me know if that is the case. Irrespective, I suspect that there are two different species involved here. I have an idea of what these may be, but need to do further research to confirm that if I can. Unfortunately all my field guides are still packed up at the moment and that severely restricts the quality of information I would normally have ready access to.
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tropicbreeze
Active Member
@Bluetongue1 thanks for the comments. It's a bit hard to say exactly how many different individuals are in the photos. There was a lot of leaf litter and a lot of them were darting in and out of it. I was sitting in the one spot so these were close together.
@tropicbreeze,
Unfortunately, my laptop bit the dust about one month ago and I have only just bought a new one and am still in the process of installing the basic stuff – definitely not my forte! All my notes are on the old hard drive and I need technical assistance to access that. My son is my ‘go to’ tech guru but he works FIFO as an engineer and has been tied up moving house when he was down. So it will be several more weeks, assuming I can retrieve my data, to give you a firm opinion on the possible Carlia species. Sorry about that.
Unfortunately, my laptop bit the dust about one month ago and I have only just bought a new one and am still in the process of installing the basic stuff – definitely not my forte! All my notes are on the old hard drive and I need technical assistance to access that. My son is my ‘go to’ tech guru but he works FIFO as an engineer and has been tied up moving house when he was down. So it will be several more weeks, assuming I can retrieve my data, to give you a firm opinion on the possible Carlia species. Sorry about that.
tropicbreeze
Active Member
@Bluetongue1, will keep fingers crossed it works out okay for you. I can empathise with you. Most of my data is on an external hard drive but I last backed up about 6 weeks ago and now the drive has crashed. Still trying to get the data retrieved but not looking too good.