Mabuya is a genus of long-tailed skinks, lizards in the family Scincidae. The genus is restricted to species from various Caribbean islands. Out of 26 recognized species, six species are only found in Caribbean islands. Species in the genus Mabuya are primarily carnivorous, though many are omnivorous. The genus is viviparous, having a highly evolved placenta that resembles that of eutherian mammals. Formerly, many Old World species were placed here, as Mabuya was a kind of "wastebasket taxon". These Old World species are now placed in the genera Chioninia, Eutropis, and Trachylepis. Under the
Mabuya is a genus of long-tailed skinks, lizards in the family Scincidae. The genus is restricted to species from various Caribbean islands. Out of 26 recognized species, six species are only found in Caribbean islands. Species in the genus Mabuya are primarily carnivorous, though many are omnivorous. The genus is viviparous, having a highly evolved placenta that resembles that of eutherian mammals. Formerly, many Old World species were placed here, as Mabuya was a kind of "wastebasket taxon". These Old World species are now placed in the genera Chioninia, Eutropis, and Trachylepis. Under the older classification, the New World species were referred to as "American mabuyas", and as of 2024 include the genera Alinea, Aspronema, Brasiliscincus, Capitellum, Copeoglossum, Maracaiba, Marisora, and Varzea.
Most species in this genus are feared to be possibly extinct due to introduced predators.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).