Two new Hemidactylus geckos from Telangana, and why I love cryptic species
Every so often a gecko paper lands that reminds me how much hidden diversity sits on ordinary-looking rock piles. This month researchers described two new Hemidactylus species from Nalgonda and Warangal districts in Telangana, India, both placed in the Hemidactylus brookii group, Murrayi clade.
Hemidactylus cairnicola, the "cairn gecko", is a medium-sized species that reaches about 49 mm snout-to-vent length. It has a stout, slightly flattened body, a big head and rows of keeled, conical tubercles on its back. What I find charming is the habitat: it lives on rocky outcrops in scrub forest and on black rock cairns right beside farmland and villages. Its light-brown to grey colouring shifts with the rock it sits on, and it hides in crevices by day and forages for insects at night. It shares its turf with other geckos, skinks, agamids and even the Indian sand boa.
The second species, Hemidactylus koyaorum, is known only from its type locality in Warangal District. Genetically it sits closest to H. treutleri, but mitochondrial ND2 sequences differ by 7.0 to 13.5 percent, and the two new species differ from each other by roughly 10 percent. That is a big gap for animals that look so alike, which is exactly why the authors call them cryptic.
For those of us who keep and breed geckos, stories like this are a good reminder that "common house gecko" is often a whole complex of species. Both new animals are known from a single site each, so conservation questions come with the discovery. I hope more surveys of these dry plateau habitats follow.
Source: Reptiles Magazine
Hemidactylus cairnicola, the "cairn gecko", is a medium-sized species that reaches about 49 mm snout-to-vent length. It has a stout, slightly flattened body, a big head and rows of keeled, conical tubercles on its back. What I find charming is the habitat: it lives on rocky outcrops in scrub forest and on black rock cairns right beside farmland and villages. Its light-brown to grey colouring shifts with the rock it sits on, and it hides in crevices by day and forages for insects at night. It shares its turf with other geckos, skinks, agamids and even the Indian sand boa.
The second species, Hemidactylus koyaorum, is known only from its type locality in Warangal District. Genetically it sits closest to H. treutleri, but mitochondrial ND2 sequences differ by 7.0 to 13.5 percent, and the two new species differ from each other by roughly 10 percent. That is a big gap for animals that look so alike, which is exactly why the authors call them cryptic.
For those of us who keep and breed geckos, stories like this are a good reminder that "common house gecko" is often a whole complex of species. Both new animals are known from a single site each, so conservation questions come with the discovery. I hope more surveys of these dry plateau habitats follow.
Source: Reptiles Magazine
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