I have an approximately 5 year old female Corucia that I've owned for about 4 years. She is supposedly CB and judging by her age and condition when I received her I tend to believe this is true. I have also just acquired a yearling CB male (and I know he is CB because I know the breeder). My female and the new male are morphologically very different. The female is of the "standard" appearance. The male is much duller in color, no splotches, scales appear slightly keeled or wrinkled (but he's not dehydrated and has no retained shed), and his body is generally more elongate and angular than the standard type.
I have plans to introduce the two once the male is out of quarantine, but I have several questions and concerns about their eventual introduction. They are as follows:
1. Where do I find information, descriptions, pictures of C.z. alfredschmidti to determine if that's what I have? Have any other subspecies been identified?
2. If the male is not of a different recognized subspecies, I'm assuming that he at least comes from a different island. Where does the research stand here and again, is there information that could help me determine the locale of my two skinks? (The male's breeder has no idea where her parent stock originated from, and I can't remember the name of the individual that sold me the female, so those are dead ends.)
3. Should I be concerned about placing a juvenile with an adult? Brian's point about adults protecting orphaned juveniles leads me to think not. (Outside of ordinary concerns when introducing 2 animals of course.)
4. Will skinks from different islands breed? Will they even get along?
5. *Should* skinks from different islands breed? Is it more important to keep the regional diversity of the wild communities intact or to increase the numbers of CB individuals to reduce collecting pressures on wild populations?
Comments, suggestions, criticisms, references to more information both online and in print (please!) are welcome. I would also really like to hear from you all about the last point.
TIA
-Z
