Ecto- and endoparasites of the King's skink (Egernia kingii) on Penguin Island

Abstract

Wildlife species are often host to a diversity of parasites, but our knowledge of their diversity and ecology is extremely limited, especially for reptiles. Little is known about the host-parasite ecology of the Australian lizard, the King's skink (Egernia kingii). In spring of 2015, we carried out a field-based study of a population of King's skinks on Penguin Island (Western Australia). We documented five species of parasites, including two ectoparasitic mites (an undescribed laelapid mite and Mesolaelaps australiensis), an undescribed coccidia species, and two nematode species (Pharyngodon tiliquae and Capillaria sp.). The laelapid mite was the most abundant parasite, infesting 46.9% of the 113 captured lizards. This mite species increased in prevalence and abundance over the course of the study. Infection patterns of both mites varied with lizard life-stage; sub-adults were more commonly infested with laelapid mites than adults or juveniles, and sub-adults and adults were infested by more laelapid mites than juveniles. By contrast, adults had a higher prevalence of M. australiensis than juveniles or sub-adults. Among the gastrointestinal parasites, P. tiliquae was relatively common among the sampled lizards (35.3%). These results give new important information about reptiles as parasite hosts and what factors influence infection patterns.

Nomenclature of supra-generic units within the Family Scincidae (Squamata)

“…The Egerniini of Welch (1982), and the earlier Egernina of De Vis (1888), which need to be treated as independent due to the different stems employed in the formation of the names, apply to a much more geographically restricted (Australia, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Maluku Archipelago of Indonesia) and less species-rich (62 species in 8 genera) lineage for which there have been many fewer uses of the terms Egerniini/Egerninae/Egernidae (although again the informal name Egernia group of Greer (1979) has a much greater usage). While I have been able to identify 40 uses of these names (with or without the double -i) since Welch (1982) created Egerniini (Egerniidae: Hedges & Conn 2012;Pyron et al 2013;Zug 2013;Hedges 2014;Sy 2015;Bahmani et al 2016Bahmani et al , 2018Feizi et al 2016;Paluh & Bauer 2017;Čerňaňský et al 2020;Čerňaňský & Syromyatnikova 2021;Egerniinae: Hitchmough et al 2016;Bull et al 2017;Halliwell et al 2017a-c;Atkins et al 2018Atkins et al , 2020Foster et al 2018;Norval et al 2018Norval et al , 2021Bower et al 2019;Chapple et al 2019Chapple et al , 2021Ortiz et al 2019;Thorn et al 2019Thorn et al , 2021Treilibs et al 2019;While et al 2019;Norval & Gardner 2020;Pearson et al 2020;Ridley et al 2020;Stampe et al 2020;Thompson et al 2020;Watson et al 2020…”