application 2

• The endangered species that I chose was the Puerto Rican Skink, I was intrigued by it because of the name and the unique look. The Puerto Rican Skink is a lizard that has a body that looks more like a snake than a lizard. They also have very short legs that barely come off the ground. Their coloring is usually a brown black coloring and when in the sun can sometimes appear as red. The habitat that the Puerto Rican Skink lives in is forest and shrubland areas. A threat to this species is secondary pressures from other exotic mammals, mainly black rats that are ubiquitous in all habitats and elevations in Puerto Rico, and possibly from habitat conversion due to urbanization and agricultural expansion (Hedges and Conn 2012). Possible solutions to help the endangered species would be if people went into the habitat and maybe got rid of the invasive species and other opposing threats to the species. This would then leave it a safer environment for the species. One threat to my species would be Invasive non-native/alien species/diseases. And I chose this threat because it was the most interesting. The threat would be bad for this species because they live in shrubbery and are on the ground mostly. This would be bad when the invasive species comes in as a threat because it directly affects them. I chose this threat because it seemed like the most intense threat to the species in my opinion. The Puerto Rican Skink is in the category Skink Temporal range: Eocene - Recent. The Puerto Rican Skinks diet consists of plants and invertebrates. The lifespan of a wild Puerto Rican Skink is still unknown, but a Skink that is kept in captivity is around twenty years. The Peutro Rican Skink reproduces by laying eggs between the months May and July which is about a month after mating. The female Skinks lay around fifteen to eighteen eggs. They chose to lay their eggs in small cavities like a rotting log, stump,board,loose bark, a rock or an abandoned rodent burrow. Fewer than two hundred Peurto Rican Skinks exist in the world today. 

The Puerto Rican Skink preferer to live in a place that they can dig or burrow into the sand. Some of the secosytems that the Skink tends to live in are; forests, rainforests, deserts, mountainous regions, suburbs, cities, agricultural areas, wetlands, and much more. Threats towards the Puerto Rican Skinks population is secondary pressures from other exotic mammals, mainly black rats that are ubiquitous in all habitats and elevations in Puerto Rico, and possibly from habitat conversion due to urbanization and agricultural expansion (Hedges and Conn 2012). But the biggest threat to the Puerto Rican Skink is Invasive non-native/alien species/diseases. I chose this threat because it was the most interesting. The threat would be bad for this species because they live in shrubbery and are on the ground mostly. This would be bad when the invasive species comes in as a threat because it directly affects them. Some of the other threats to the Puerto Rican Skink are climate change and habitat destruction from deforestation. People who are living in Keene contribute to the threat of Puerto Rican Skink by climate change. People in Keene contribute to this by littering which contributes then to climate change. By contributing to climate change this affects the Peurto Rican skinks and their habitat directly. This then also leads to the lowering of the population of the Puerto Rican skink.

Optional section 1:

watch

(video on skink) Could not find a video on Peurto Rican skink so I decided to just find a video of a different skink.