A new species of Cyrtodactylus (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary

Abstract

Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensissp. nov. is described from Phnom Chi, an isolated mountain in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, Kampong Thom Province, Cambodia. The new species is recognized by having a unique combination of morphological characters, including snout-vent length 76.1–80.7 mm; paravertebral tubercles 31–36; ventral scales 45–54; enlarged femoral scales 0–8, without pores; enlarged precloacal scales 7–10, bearing pores 4–5 in males, pits 1–7 in females; the posterior border of nuchal loop unbroken and pointed, bordered anteriorly and posteriorly by a broad yellow or yellowish white band; and yellow spots on top of head. The new species also represents a divergent mitochondrial DNA lineage within the C. irregularis complex that is closely related to C. ziegleri, but the phylogenetic relationships among the new species and two divergent mitochondrial subclades within C. ziegleri are not resolved based on available sequence data. Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensissp. nov. is the only member of the C. irregularis complex known to occur west of the Mekong River. The new species may be endemic to Phnom Chi, and likely faces imminent conservation threats.

Phylogenetic partitioning of the third-largest vertebrate genus in the world, Cyrtodactylus Gray, 1827 (Reptilia; Squamata; Gekkonidae) and its relevance to taxonomy and conservation

“…Vietnam and extends to adjacent regions in easternmost Cambodia and southeast Laos (Nazarov et al 2012;Nguyen et al 2013;Neang et al 2020;Ostrowski et al 2020;Fig. 9).…”

“…9). The group was previously considered to be a single species, С. irregularis (Smith 1921), until a number of studies demonstrated its unprecedented diversity with 20 new species described within the last 14 years (Nguyen et al 2013;Neang et al 2020;Ostrowski et al 2020). This analysis reveals at least 11 more lineages corresponding to potentially undescribed species and taxonomic investigations on these lineages are currently underway by various authors.…”

“…According to these data, species diversity within the irregularis group remains underestimated. Most species are narrow-range endemics and a number of cryptic lineages have been revealed within the wide-ranging species such as С. cattienensis (Geissler et al 2009;), the С. ziegleri -С. bugiamapensis complex (Nazarov et al 2008(Nazarov et al , 2012Neang et al 2020), and С. pseudoquadrivirgatus (Nguyen et al 2017a) that require further integrative taxonomic assessment. Nguyen et al 2013Nguyen et al , 2017aPauwels et al 2018;Neang et al 2020).…”

A new granite cave-dwelling Bent-toed Gecko from Vietnam of the Cyrtodactylus irregularis group (Squamata; Gekkonidae) and a discussion on cave ecomorphology

“…Additionally, to compare the newly discovered population of Cyrtodactylus sp. from Khanh Hoa Province with other members of the irregularis species group, we generated a 672 base pair segment of the 5'-end of (CO1) which included 29 sequences of 26 species and compared it with the CO1-barcoding dataset from Pauwels et al (2018) and Neang et al (2020). Cyrtodactylus intermedius was used as an outgroup to root the tree based on Wood et al (2012.…”

“…The small inset map shows Vietnam and the location of the area of studies detailed in a larger map (red rectangle). For details on species localities see Pauwels et al (2018); Neang et al (2020); and Ostrowski et al (2020). ed that species within the irregularis group bearing the same habitat preference did not form monophyletic subgroups, but were nested in different places throughout the group's phylogeny.…”