Emoia sanfordi, known commonly as Sanford's emo skink and Sanford's tree skink, is a species of lizard in the family Scincidae. The species is endemic to Vanuatu.
Etymology The specific name, sanfordi, is in honor of American ornithologist Leonard Cutler Sanford.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . (Emoia sanfordi, p. 232).
Common names In Vanuatu, E. sanfordi is known as a-kal in the southern Paamese language and ghala [ɣala] in the Raga language.Ross, Malcolm (2011). "Concluding notes". pp. 427-436. In: Ross, Malcolm; Pawley, Andrew; Osmond, Meredith (editors) (2011). The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society. Volume 4: Animals. Canberra, Australia: Pacific Linguistics 621.
Habitat The preferred natural habitat of E. sanfordi is forest, at altitudes of .
Reproduction E. sanfordi is oviparous.
References
Further reading Brown WC (1991). "Lizards of the Genus Emoia (Scincidae) with Observations on Their Evolution and Biogeography". Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences (15): i-vi, 1-94. (Emoia sanfordi, pp. 61–62, Figure 24). Schmidt KP, Burt CE (1930). "Herpetological results of the Whitney South Sea Expedition. V. Description of Emoia sanfordi, a new lizard from islands of the Western Pacific (Scincidæ)". American Museum Novitates (436): 1–3. (Emoia sanfordi, new species).