Abstract
A distinct new gecko of the genus Hemidactylus is described from the Meghamalai massif in Tamil Nadu, India. This large sized (average SVL 88.2±16.0 to at least 112.2 mm), cryptic, rock-dwelling species is superficially similar to its tuberculate South Asian congeners of comparable size, but can be distinguished from them in having 17–19 longitudinal rows of fairly regularly arranged, strongly keeled, striated tubercles with the two most medial parasagittal rows smaller, flatter, strongly keeled and rounded, increasing in size laterally and becoming strongly conical at the flanks; 8–10 and 10–12 sub-digital lamellae under the first and fourth digits respectively of both manus and pes; 17–22 femoral pores on each side separated medially by a diastema of 10–11 poreless scales; 11–15 supralabials and 9–14 infralabials. Molecular data supports the distinctiveness of this species and helps ascertain its phylogenetic position within the larger Indian Hemidactylus clade.
References
Agarwal, I., Giri, V.B. & Bauer, A. (2011) A new cryptic rock dwelling Hemidactylus (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from south India. Zootaxa, 2765, 21–37.
Agarwal, I. (2016) Two new species of ground-dwelling Cyrtodactylus (Geckoella) from Mysore Plateau, south India. Zootaxa, 4193 (2), 228–244.
https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4193.2.2
Bansal, R. & Karanth, K.P. (2010) Molecular phylogeny of Hemidactylus geckos (Squamata: Gekkonidae) of the Indian subcontinent reveals a unique Indian radiation and an Indian origin of Asian house geckos. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 57, 459–465.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2010.06.008
Bauer, A.M., Jackman, T.R., Greenbaum, E., Giri, V.B. & De Silva, A. (2010) South Asia supports a major endemic radiation of Hemidactylus geckos. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 57, 343–352.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2010.06.014
Bauer, A.M., Vyas, R., Jackman, T.R., Lajmi, A. & Giri, V.B. (2012) Hemidactylus porbandarensis Sharma, 1981 is a synonym of Hemidactylus robustus Heyden, 1827. Hamadryad, 36, 46–51.
Bhupathy, S. & Sathishkumar, N. (2013) Status of reptiles in Meghamalai and its environs, Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa, 5, 4953–4961.
https://doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o3595.4953-61
Bhupathy, S. & S. Babu (2013) Meghamalai landscape : a biodiversity hotspot. Journal of Threatened Taxa, 5, 4939–4944.
https://doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o3592.4939-44
Carranza, S. & Arnold, E.N. (2006) Systematics, biogeography, and evolution of Hemidactylus geckos (Reptilia: Gekkonidae) elucidated using mitochondrial DNA sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 38, 531–545.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2005.07.012
Dandge, P.H. & Tiple, A.D. (2015) A new species of rupicolus gecko of the genus Hemidactylus Oken, 1817 (Reptilia: Squamata: Gekkonidae) from Maharashtra, central India. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 22, 233–240.
Deraniyagala, P.E.P. (1937) A new gecko Hemidactylus maculatus hunae. Ceylon Journal of Science, 20, 185–189.
Deraniyagala, P.E.P. (1953) A Colored Atlas of some Vertebrates from Ceylon. Vol. 2. Tetrapod Reptilia. Ceylon National Museums, Colombo, 101 pp.
Deepak, V., Giri, V.B., Asif, M., Dutta, S.K., Vyas, R., Zambre, A.M., Bhosale, H. & Karanth, K.P. (2016) Systematics and phylogeny of Sitana (Reptilia: Agamidae) of Peninsular India, with description of one new genus and five new species. Contributions to Zoology, 85, 67–111.
Gaikwad, K.S., Kulkarni, H., Bhambure, R. & Giri, V.B. (2010) Notes on the distribution, natural history and variation of Hemidactylus albofasciatus (Grandison and Soman, 1963) (Squamata: Gekkonidae). Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 106, 305–312.
Ganesh, S.R., Bhupathy, S., David, P., Sathishkumar, N. & Srinivas, G. (2014) Snake fauna of High Wavy Mountains, Western Ghats, India: Species Richness, Status, and Distribution Pattern. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 21, 53–64.
Giri, V.B. (2008) A new rock-dwelling Hemidactylus (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from Maharashtra, India. Hamadryad, 32, 25–33.
Giri, V.B. & Bauer, A.M. (2008) A new ground-dwelling Hemidactylus (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from Maharashtra, with a key to the Hemidactylus of India. Zootaxa, 1700, 21–34.
Giri, V.B., Bauer, A.M., Vyas, R. & Patil, S. (2009) New species of rock-dwelling Hemidactylus (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from Gujarat, India. Journal of Herpetology, 43, 385–393.
https://doi.org/10.1670/08-137R1.1Giri, V. B., Bauer, A. M., Mohapatra, P. P., Srinivasulu, C., & Agarwal, I. (2017). A new species of large-bodied, tuberculate Hemidactylus Oken (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from the Eastern Ghats, India, 4347(2), 331–345.
https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4347.2.8
Hutton, A.F. & David, P. (2009) Notes on a collection of snakes from south India, with emphasis on the snake fauna of the Meghamalai Hills (High Wavy Mountains). Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 105, 299–316.
Javed, S.M., Mirza, Z.A., Srinivasulu, C., Murthy, B.H.C.K. & Tampal, F. (2011) A Divergent Population of Hemidactylus maculatus maculatus Duméril et Bibron, 1836 (Reptilia: Sauria: Gekkonidae) from the Northern Eastern Ghats, India. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 18, 7–16.
Kluge, A.G. (1969) The evolution and geographical origin of the New World Hemidactylus mabouia brookii complex (Gekkonidae, Sauria). Miscellaneous Publications, Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, 138, 1–78.
Lajmi, A., Giri, V.B. & Karanth, K.P. (2016) Molecular data in conjunction with morphology help resolve the Hemidactylus brookii complex (Squamata: Gekkonidae). Organisms Diversity & Evolution, 16, 659–677.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13127-016-0271-9Mahony, S. (2009) A new species of gecko of the genus Hemidactylus (Reptilian: Gekkonidae) from Andhra Pradesh, India. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 16, 27–34.
Mahony, S. (2011) Taxonomic revision of Hemidactylus brookii Gray: re-examination of the type series and some Asian synonyms, and a discussion of the obscure species Hemidactylus subtriedrus Jerdon (Reptilia: Gekkonidae). Zootaxa, 3042, 37–67.
Mirza, Z.A., Bhosale, H. & Patil, R. (2017) A new large species of gecko of the genus Hemidactylus Oken, 1817 (Reptilia: Sauria: Gekkonidae) from the Eastern Ghats, India. Comptes Rendus Biologies. [published online]
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crvi.2017.09.003Mirza, Z.A. & Raju, D. (2017) A new rupicolous species of gecko of the genus Hemidactylus Oken, 1817 from the Satpura Hills, Central India. Amphibian & Reptile Conservation, 11, 51–71.
Mirza, Z.A. & Sanap, R.V. (2014) A new cryptic species of gecko of the genus Hemidactylus Oken, 1817 (Reptilia: Gekkonidae) from Southern India. Taprobanica, 6, 12–20.
https://doi.org/10.4038/tapro.v6i1.7056Murthy, B.H.C.K., Bauer, A., Lajmi, A., Agarwal, I. & Giri, V.B. (2015) A new rock dwelling Hemidactylus (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from Chhattisgarh, India. Zootaxa, 4021 (2), 334–350.
https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4021.2.5
Pal, S.P., Gaikwad, K.S., Murthy, C., Dutta, S.K. & Giri, V.B. (2013) New locality records of the recently described gecko Hemidactylus aaronbaueri Giri, 2008 with additional notes on natural history. Hamadryad, 36, 162–167.
Palanivelu, R., Jayaraman, M., Doss, C.M., Selvan, R.A. & Mamallan, R. (1988) Geology and geomorphology of Cumbum Valley and Varshanadu Hills, Madurai District, Tamil Nadu through remote sensing. Journal of Indian Society for Remote Sensing, 16, 73–78.
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02992103Ronquist, F., Teslenko, M., van der Mark, P., Ayres, D.L., Darling, A., Höhna, S., Larget, B., Liu, L., Suchard, M.A. & Huelsenbeck, J.P. (2012) MrBayes 3.2: efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space. Systematic Biology, 61, 539–542.
https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/sys029Scherz, M.D., Daza, J.D., Köhler, J, Vences, M. & Glaw, F. (2017) Off the scale: a new species of fish-scale gecko (Squamata: Gekkonidae: Geckolepis) with exceptionally large scales. PeerJ, 5, e2955
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2955
Silvestro, D. & Michalak, I. (2012) raxmlGUI: a graphical front-end for RAxML—Springer. Organisms Diversity & Evolution, 12, 335–337.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13127-011-0056-0
Smith, M.A. (1935) The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Reptilia and Amphibia. Vol. II. Sauria. Taylor and Francis, London, xiii + 440 pp., 2 folding maps, 1 pl.
Srinivas, G. & Bhupathy, S. (2013) Anurans of the Meghamalai landscape, Western Ghats, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa, 5, 4973–4978.
https://doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o3594.4973-8
Stamatakis, A. (2006) RAxML-VI-HPC: maximum likelihood-based phylogenetic analyses with thousands of taxa and mixed models. Bioinformatics, 22 (21), 2688–2690.
https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btl446
Stuart, A.J. (1879) A manual of the Tinnevelly District in the Presidency of Madras—Madras Government Press, Madras, 1879 pp.
Tamura, K., Peterson, D., Peterson, N., Stecher, G., Nei, M. & Kumar, S. (2011) MEGA5: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis using maximum likelihood, evolutionary distance, and maximum parsimony methods. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 28, 2731–2739.
https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msr121Thompson, J.D., Higgins, D.G. & Gibson, T.J. (1994) CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucleic Acids Research, 22, 4673–4680.
https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/22.22.4673Zug, G.R., Vindum, J.V. & Koo, M.S. (2007) Burmese Hemidactylus (Reptilia, Squamata, Gekkonidae): taxonomic notes on Tropical Asian Hemidactylus. Proceeding of California Academy of Science, 4 (58), 387–405.