Two new species of Hemidactylus Goldfuss, 1820 (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from the rocky outcrops of the Deccan plateau, peninsular India

Abstract

The gekkonid diversity of the under-explored dry zones in Peninsular India is not yet completely inventoried, as evidenced by frequent new species descriptions. Here, we describe two new species of Hemidactylus from the dry rocky zones of Deccan Plateau viz. Hemidactylus mahonyi sp. nov. from Sandur Hills and Hemidactylus srikanthani sp. nov. from Devarayana Durga Hills, Karnataka State of Peninsular India. The new species belong to the morphologically cryptic H. murrayi Clade but differ from each other and the known congeners by a set of morphological characters and possess non-overlapping distribution ranges. Furthermore, the new species are also divergent (> 6.4% uncorrected p-distance) from their nearest related congeners, and from one another with respect to the ND2 mitochondrial gene. Recently, other new species of reptiles have been described from the two aforesaid type localities, indicating that further bio-inventories in the dry zones of peninsular India will yield more such novelties.

Globetrotting geckos: Historical biogeography suggests an Indian origin and “Out-Of-India” dispersal for the cosmopolitanHemidactylusgeckos

“…Recent research on Hemidactylus has focused primarily on taxonomy and systematics (e.g. Ceriaco et al, 2020; Smid et al, 2020; 2023; Lobon-Rovira et al, 2021; Adhikari et al, 2022; Das et al,2022; Pal & Mirza, 2022; Khandekar et al, 2023; Narayanan et al, 2023), with fewer studies on biogeography (Lajmi et al, 2019; Murdoch, 2022), diversification (Lajmi & Karanth, 2020; Luzete et al, 2022), invasive potential and dispersal ecology (Agarwal et al, 2021; Rato et al, 2021; Lamb et al,2021; Lapwong et al, 2021), and ectoparasite biology (Borroto-Páez et al, 2020; Diaz et al, 2020). Although many of these studies involve phylogenetic reconstructions, they are mostly localized.…”