A New Genus and Species of Live-Bearing Scincid Lizard (Reptilia: Scincidae) from New Caledonia ROSS A. SADLIER, 1 SARAH A. SMITH, 2,3 AARON M. BAUER, 2,4 AND ANTHONY H. WHITAKER 5 1 Section of Herpetology, Australian Museum, 6 College Street, Sydney 2000, New South Wales, Australia; E-mail: rosss@austmus.gov.au 2 Department of Biology, Villanova University, 800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, Pennsylvania 19085, USA 5 270 Thorpe-Orinoco Road, Orinoco, RD 1, Motueka 7161, New Zealand ABSTRACT .—A new genus and species of lizard is described from far northern New Caledonia and the I ˆ les Belep, to the north of the New Caledonian mainland. In overall appearance and biology, it is most similar to the forest-dwelling species of the endemic New Caledonian genus Marmorosphax and shares with those skinks a live-bearing mode of reproduction. However, the new species is highly divergent in its scalation and includes a combination of character states not seen in any other New Caledonian species. The new species has been recorded mainly from dry forest habitats in the far north of the region, including dry closed forest on the I ˆ les Belep, dry riverine forest adjacent to the Rivie ` re Ne ´houe ´, and dry closed forest on Dome de Tie ´ baghi. The forests in which this new species is found are now present as relictual patches as a result of historical factors or more recent anthropogenic impacts. The taxonomic uniqueness of this species, in combination with its restricted distribution and threats to its preferred habitat, make it a high priority for conservation management. New Caledonia is a French island territory in the Coral Sea in the southwest Pacific Ocean. The New Caledonian mainland (16,648 km 2 ), also known as the Grande Terre, lies at the southern margin of the tropics and reaches elevations of more than 1600 m. It has been identified as a biodiversity hotspot (Myers, 1988, 1990; Myers et al., 2000). The New Caledonian region is both floristically and faunistically distinctive (Morat et al., 1986; Bauer, 1999; Bauer and Sadlier, 2000) and harbors a number of phylogenetically in- teresting taxa such as Amborella, the sister taxon to remaining flowering plants (Mathews and Donoghue, 1999), and the endemic and mono- typic avian family Rhynochetidae. High levels of endemism, approaching 100% in some less vagile taxa, characterize many in- vertebrate groups in New Caledonia (Holloway, 1979; Chazeau, 1993; Haase and Bouchet, 1998). Among vertebrates, lizards exhibit similarly high levels of endemism (Bauer and Sadlier, 1993, 2000; Adler et al., 1995) with 14 of 17 genera in the region strictly endemic, and an additional skink genus, Caledoniscincus, nearly so. By comparison, there are no known endemic lizard genera in the adjacent island groups of Vanuatu, Fiji, or Samoa, all of which share a different, and much more recent, geological origin than New Caledonia (Avias, 1973; Holloway, 1979; Kroenke, 1984, 1996). Several genera of skinks and geckos, including Caledoniscincus, Nannoscin- cus, and Bavayia, are particularly species rich and appear to have radiated in situ (Bauer, 1989). As a result of lineage splitting in association with the geological evolution of the Grande Terre, New Caledonian lizards are typified by high levels of intraisland microendemism (Bauer and Sadlier, 2000). The already limited distribu- tions of many taxa have been further fragmented by more recent natural and human-mediated changes in vegetation. This is particularly true of dry forest formations. Sclerophyll forests, for example, are now recognized as the most threatened terrestrial habitat on the island (Bouchet et al., 1995). Recent studies have started to document the reptile fauna of these restricted dry forest habitats. Surveys at Presqu’ı ˆle de Pindaı ¨ in 1995 (Jourdan et al., 2000, 2001) and in 1996 (Conser- vation International, 1998) and at Tie ´a near Pouembout (Barre et al., 2001) not only produced the first comprehensive inventory of lizard species for sclerophyll habitat in New Caledonia but also identified several species known only from this habitat type (Bauer et al., 1998; Sadlier et al. in Bauer and Sadlier, 2000; Sadlier et al., 2002). As part of a project to investigate the lizard fauna of poorly known areas and habitats of the northwest of New Caledonia, including its off- shore islands, several dry closed forest sites were selected. The new scincid lizard described here 3 Present address: Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA. 4 Corresponding Author. E-mail: aaron.bauer@ villanova.edu Journal of Herpetology, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 320–330, 2004 Copyright 2004 Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles