page_title: Noronha skink
section_title: Origin
hierarchical_section_title: Noronha skink / Origin
caption_attribution_description: English: Morro do Pico by Praia Conceicao (321 metres) is a prominent feature of the island Fernando de Noronha off the north-eastern "corner" of Brazil.
context_page_description: The Noronha skink is a species of skink from the island of Fernando de Noronha off northeastern Brazil. It is covered with dark and light spots on the upperparts and is usually about 7 to 10 cm in length. The tail is long and muscular, but breaks off easily. Very common throughout Fernando de Noronha, it is an opportunistic feeder, eating both insects and plant material, including nectar from the Erythrina velutina tree, as well as other material ranging from cookie crumbs to eggs of its own species. Introduced predators such as feral cats prey on it and several parasitic worms infect it.
  Perhaps seen by Amerigo Vespucci in 1503, it was first formally described in 1839. Its subsequent taxonomic history has been complex, riddled with confusion with Trachylepis maculata and other species, homonyms, and other problems. The species is classified in the otherwise mostly African genus Trachylepis and is thought to have reached its island from Africa by rafting. The enigmatic Trachylepis tschudii, supposedly from Peru, may well be the same species.
context_section_description: Phylogenetic analyses using a variety of mitochondrial and nuclear genes places the Noronha skink among the tropical African species of Trachylepis, a position also supported by morphological similarities. It may have arrived on its island on rafting vegetation from southwestern Africa via the Benguela Current and the South Equatorial Current, which passes Fernando de Noronha. This possibility was first suggested by Alfred Russel Wallace before 1888. Mausfeld and coworkers calculated that the journey from Africa to Fernando de Noronha would take 139 days. Because this period seemed too long for the skink to survive, they proposed that the Noronha skink instead arrived via Ascension Island, where a skink may have persisted into historical times.
  The South American and Caribbean Mabuya skinks form a clade that appears to be derived from a separate colonization from Africa. Both transatlantic colonization events are believed to have occurred within the last 9 million years.
caption: View of Morro do Pico on Fernando de Noronha
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