Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Type: Article
Published: 2024-11-20
Page range: 561-574
Abstract views: 998
PDF downloaded: 13

A new species of African diurnal dwarf geckos (Gekkonidae: Lygodactylus) from the Lower Guinea rainforest

Department of General Zoology and Neurobiology; Ruhr-University Bochum; D-44780 Bochum; Germany.; Institute of Zoology; University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover; Bünteweg 17; D-30559 Hannover; Germany
CIBIO; Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos; InBIO Laboratório Associado; Campus de Vairão; Universidade do Porto; 4485-661 Vairão; Portugal.; BIOPOLIS Program in Genomics; Biodiversity and Land Planning; CIBIO; Campus de Vairão; 4485-661 Vairão; Portugal.; TwinLab CIBIO/ISCED; Instituto Superior de Ciências da Educação da Huíla; Rua Sarmento Rodrigues s/n; Lubango; Angola.; Fundação Kissama; Rua 60 Casa 560; Lar do Patriota; Luanda; Angola
CIBIO; Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos; InBIO Laboratório Associado; Campus de Vairão; Universidade do Porto; 4485-661 Vairão; Portugal.; BIOPOLIS Program in Genomics; Biodiversity and Land Planning; CIBIO; Campus de Vairão; 4485-661 Vairão; Portugal.
Reptilia Gekkonidae Lygodactylus lobeke sp. nov. Africa Lower Guinea rainforest Lobeke Cabinda

Abstract

The genus Lygodactylus Gray is a species-rich group of small, diurnal geckos distributed in Africa, Madagascar, and South America. The genus is divided into several species groups based on morphological characters, biogeographical affinities and/or phylogenetic investigations. To date, some of these groups still contain candidate species. One of these candidate species, provisionally designed as L. sp. B (a single female from Cameroon), had been placed phylogenetically within the East African Lygodactylus scheffleri-group. Furthermore, it shares typical scale characters with all members of this group. However, L. fischeri Boulenger, eponym and member of the West/Central African L. fischeri-group, also shares these scale characters with the L. scheffleri-group and with L. sp. B. While it could be ruled out that L. sp. B was conspecific with any member of the L. scheffleri-group, it could not be ruled out that L. sp. B represents a female of L. fischeri, as there is no female type material nor a clear description of a female of L. fischeri. Only when a male of this taxon was discovered in Cabinda (Angola) in a case of barcoding, the problem could be solved. We here describe the female L. sp. B from Cameroon and the male from Cabinda as new species Lygodactylus lobeke sp. nov. It is a small nondescript species without any bold color markings, such as dark blotches above the shoulder and on the flanks, which mark the male L. fischeri. The male and the female do not differ in coloration. In captivity, the female showed distinct ‘mood dependent’ colorations, including a ‘pyjamas’ coloration. For phylogenetic analysis, only sequences of L. laterimaculatus Pasteur, L. gravis Pasteur and L. lobeke sp. nov. were available. Lygodactylus lobeke sp. nov. was recovered as an independent clade which differs greatly in 16S uncorrected pairwise distance (>10%) from these two congeners. The new species is known from two localities in the Lower Guinea rainforests, with a linear distance of about 850 km. Despite this great distance, both specimens of L. lobeke sp. nov. are genetically surprisingly similar (3.5%). Presumably, the species has a wide distribution within the Lower Guinea region and a continuous gene flow within the population.

 

References

  1. Barbour, T. & Loveridge, A. (1928) A comparative study of the herpetological faunae of the Uluguru and Usambara Mountains, Tanganyika Territory with descriptions of new species. Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 50, 87–265. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.49344
  2. Bons, J. & Pasteur, G. (1977) Solution histologique à un problème de taxonomie herpétologique intéressant les rapports paléobiologiques de l’Amérique du Sud de de l’ Afrique. Comptes Rendus de l’ Académie des Sciences, Série D, 284 (24), 2547-2550.
  3. Boulenger, G.A. (1890) First report on additions to the lizard collection in the British Museum (Natural History). Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1890, 77–87, pls. viii–xi.
  4. Broadley, D.G. & Howell, K.M. (1991) A check list of the reptiles of Tanzania, with synoptic keys. Syntarsus, 1, 1–70.
  5. Broadley, D.G. & Howell, K.M. (2000) Reptiles. In Burgess, N.D. & Clarke, G.P. (Eds.), Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa. IUCN, Gland, pp. 191–199.
  6. Burgess, N., Hales, J. A., Underwood, E., Dinerstein, E., Olson, D., Itoua, I., Schipper, J., Ricketts, T. & Newman, K. (2004). Terrestrial ecoregions of Africa and Madagascar: a conservation assessment. CABI Digital Library, Wallingford, xxiii + 501 pp.
  7. Burgess, N.D., Butynski, T.M., Cordeiro, N.J., Doggart, N.H., Fieldsa, J., Howell, K.M., Kilahama, F.B., Loader, S.P., Lovett, J.C., Mbilinyi, B., Menegon, M., Moyer, D.C., Nashanda, E., Perkin, A., Rovero, A., Stanley, W.T. & Stuart, S.N. (2007) The biological importance of the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania and Kenya. Biological Conservation, 134, 209–231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2006.08.015
  8. Dunger, G.T. (1969) The lizards and snakes of Nigeria. Nigerian Field, 33, 18–47.
  9. Gippner, S., Travers, S.L., Scherz, M.D., Colston, T.J., Lyra, M.L., Ashwini, V.M., Multzsch, M., Nielson, S.V., Rancilhac, L., Glaw, F., Bauer, A.M. & Vences, M. (2021) A comprehensive phylogeny of dwarf geckos of the genus Lygodactylus, with insights into their systematics and morphological variation. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 165, 107311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2021.107311
  10. Gonwouo, N.L., LeBreton, M., Chirio, L., Ineich, I., Tchamba, N.M., Ngassam, P., Dzikouk, G. & Diffo, J.L. (2007) Biodiversity and conservation of the reptiles of the Mount Cameroon Area. African Journal of Herpetology, 56 (2), 149–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/21564574.2007.9635560
  11. Hardy, O.J., Born, C., Budde, K., Daïnou, K., Dauby, G., Duminil, J., Ewédjé, E.-E.B.K., Gomez, C., Heuertzu, M., Koffi, G.K., Lowe, A.J., Micheneau, C., Ndiade-Bourobou, D., Piñeiro, R. & Poncet, V. (2013) Comparative phylogeography of African rain forest trees: A review of genetic signatures of vegetation history in the Guineo-Congolian region. Comptes Rendus Geoscience, 345, 284–296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crte.2013.05.001
  12. Hoang, D.T., Chernomor, O., Von Haeseler, A., Minh, B.Q. & Vinh, L.S. (2018) UFBoot2: Improving the ultrafast bootstrap approximation. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 35, 518–522. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx281
  13. Jacobson, N.H.G. (1992) New Lygodactylus taxa (Reptilia: Gekkonidae) from the Transvaal. Bonner Zoologische Beiträge, 43 (4), 527–542.
  14. Jacobson, N.H.G. (1994) A new subspecies of Lygodactylus ocellatus (Roux) (Lacertilia: Gekkonidae) from the Soutpansberg, South Africa. Journal of African Zoology, 108 (3), 231–236.
  15. Kalyaanamoorthy, S., Minh, B.Q., Wong, T.K.F., Von Haeseler, A. & Jermiin, L.S. (2017) ModelFinder: Fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates. Nature Methods, 14, 587–589. https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.4285
  16. Lanna, F.M., Werneck, F.P., Gehara, M., Fonseca, E.M., Colli, G.R., Sites, J.W., Rodrigues, M.T., Garda, A.A. (2018) The evolutionary history of Lygodactylus lizards in the South American open diagonal. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 127, 638–645. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2018.06.010
  17. Lobón-Rovira, J., Baptista, N.L., Clark, T., Verburgt, L., Jongsma, G.F.M., Conradie, W., Veríssimo, L. & Vaz Pinto, P. (2024) Filling the Gaps: Herpetological Checklists of Mayombe National Park and Cabinda Province (Angola) shed light on one of the most unexplored corners of tropical Central Africa. African Journal of Herpetology. [submistted]
  18. Lobón-Rovira, J., Bauer, A. M., Vaz Pinto, P., Trape, J. F., Conradie, W., Kusamba, C., Júlio, T., Cael, G., Stanley, E.L., Huges, D.F., Behangana, M., Masudi, F.M., Pauwels, O.S.G. & Greenbaum, E. (2023) Integrative revision of the Lygodactylus gutturalis (Bocage, 1873) complex unveils extensive cryptic diversity and traces its evolutionary history. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 201 (2), 447–492. [published with pagination in 2024] https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlad123
  19. Loveridge, A. (1947) Revision of the African lizards of the family Gekkonidae. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard, 98, 1–469.
  20. Maderson, P.F.A. (1968) The epidermal glands of Lygodactylus (Gekkonidae, Lacertilia). Breviora, 288, 1–35.
  21. Maley, J. (1996) The African rain forest–main characteristics of changes in vegetation and climate from the Upper Cretaceous to the Quaternary. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Section B: Biological Sciences, 104, 31–73. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269727000006114
  22. Marques, M.P., Ceríaco, L.M.P., Buehler, M.D., Bandeira, S.A., Janota, J.M. & Bauer, A.M. (2020) A revision of the dwarf geckos, genus Lygodactylus (Squamata: Gekkonidae), from Angola, with description of three new species. Zootaxa, 4853 (3), 301–352. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4853.3.1
  23. Matschie, P. (1892) Über eine kleine Sammlung von Säugethieren und Reptilien, welche Herr L. Conradt aus Usambara (Deutsch-Ostafrika) heimgebracht hat. Sitzungsbericht der Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin, 1892, 101–110. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.part.25602
  24. Mezzasalma, M., Andreone, F., Aprea, G., Glaw, F., Odierna, G. & Guarino, F.M. (2017) Molecular phylogeny, biogeography and chromosome evolution of Malagasy geckos of the genus Lygodactylus (Squamata, Gekkonidae). Zoological Scripta, 46, 42–54. https://doi.org/10.1111/zsc.12188
  25. Miller, M.A., Pfeiffer, W. & Schwartz, T. (2010) Creating the CIPRES Science Gateway for inference of large phylogenetic trees. Proceedings of the Gateway Computing Environments Workshop (GCE), New Orleans, Louisiana, 14 November 2010, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1109/GCE.2010.5676129.
  26. Müller, L. (1910) Beiträge zur Herpetologie Kameruns. Abhandlungen der Königlichen Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 24, 543–626.
  27. NASA (2000) Colored SRTM Elevation Model. Version 2000-1. Available from: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images (accessed 14 October 2022)
  28. Nguyen, L.-M., Schmidt, H.A., Von Haeseler, A. & Minh, B.Q. (2015) IQ-TREE: A fast and effective stochastic algorithm for estimating Maximum-Likelihood phylogenies. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 32 (1), 268–274. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu300
  29. Pasteur, G. (1965 [1964]) Recherches sur l’évolution des lygodactyles, lézards afromalgaches actuels. Travaux de l’Institut Scientifique Chérifien, Série Zoologie, 29, 1–132.
  30. Pasteur, G. (1995) Biodiversité et reptiles: diagnoses de sept nouvelles espèces fossiles et actuelles du genre de lézards Lygodactylus (Sauria, Gekkonidae). Dumerilia, 2, 1–21.
  31. Plana, V. (2004) Mechanisms and tempo of evolution in the African Guineo–Congolian rainforest. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359 (1450), 1585–1594. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2004.1535
  32. Portik, D.M., Travers, S.L., Bauer, A.M. & Branch, W.R. (2013) A new species of Lygodactylus (Squamata: Gekkonidae) endemic to Mount Namuli, an isolated ‘sky island’ of Northern Mozambique. Zootaxa, 3710 (5), 415–435. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3710.5.2
  33. Puente, M., Glaw, F., Vieites, D.R. & Vences, M. (2009) Review of the systematics, morphology and distribution of Malagasy dwarf geckos, genera Lygodactylus and Microscalabotes (Squamata: Gekkonidae). Zootaxa, 2103 (1), 1–76. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.2103.1.1
  34. Rambaut, A., Drummond, A.J., Xie, D., Baele, G. & Suchard, M.A. (2018) Posterior summarization in Bayesian phylogenetics using Tracer 1.7. Systematic Biology, 67, 901–904. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syy032
  35. Röll, B. (2013) Tagaktive Zwerggeckos der Gattung Lygodactylus. Natur und Tier Verlag, Münster, 120 pp.
  36. Röll, B., Pröhl, H. & Hoffmann, K.-P. (2010) Multigene phylogenetic analysis of Lygodactylus dwarf geckos (Squamata, Gekkonidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 56 (1), 327–335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2010.02.002
  37. Röll, B., Sanchez, M., Gippner, S., Bauer, A.M., Travers, S. L., Glaw, F., Hawlitschek, O. & Vences, M. (2023). Phylogeny of dwarf geckos of the genus Lygodactylus (Gekkonidae) in the Western Indian Ocean. Zootaxa, 5311(2), 232–250. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5311.2.4
  38. Ronquist, 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/sys029
  39. Sayre, R.G., Comer, P., Hak, J., Josse, C. & Bowj, J.A. (2013) New Map of Standardized Terrestrial Ecosystems of Africa. Washington DC: Association of American Geographers
  40. Spawls, S. & Rotich (1997) An annotated checklist of the lizards of Kenya. Journal of East African Natural History, 86, 61–83. https://doi.org/10.2982/0012-8317(1997)86[61:AACOTL]2.0.CO;2
  41. Spawls, S., Howell, K., Drewes, R. & Ashe, J. (2002) A Field Guide to East African Reptiles. Academis Press, San Diego, San Francisco, New York, Boston, London, Sydney and Tokyo, 543 pp.
  42. Spawls, S., Howell, K., Hinkel, H. & Menegon, M. (2018) A Field Guide to the Reptiles of East Africa. Bloomsbury, London, 624 pp.
  43. Sternfeld, R. (1912) Reptilia. In: Schubotz., R. (Ed.), Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Deutschen Zentral-Afrika Expedition 1907–1908, unter Führung Adolf Friedrichs, Herzogs zu Mecklenburg. Klinkhard & Biermann, Leipzig, pp. 197–279.
  44. Tamura, K., Stecher, G., Peterson, D., Filipski, A. & Kumar, S. (2013) MEGA6: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis Version 6.0. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 30, 2725–2729. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mst197
  45. Tornier, G. (1902) Die Crocodile, Schildkröten und Eidechsen in Kamerun. Zoologisches Jahrbuch. Abteilung für Systematik, 15, 663–677. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.part.19041
  46. Travers, S.L., Jackman, T.R. & Bauer, A.M. (2014) A molecular phylogeny of Afromontane dwarf geckos (Lygodactylus) reveals a single radiation and an increased species diversity in a South African montane center of endemism. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 80, 31–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2014.07.017
  47. Uetz, P., Freed, P., Aguilar, R. & Hošek, J. (Eds.) (2024) The Reptile Database. Available from: http//www.reptile-database.org (accessed 31 July 2024)
  48. Van den Audenaerde, D.T. (1967) Les Gekkonidae de l’Afrique centrale. Revue de Zoologie et de Botanique africaines, 76 (1–2), 163–177.
  49. Vanzolini, P.E. (1968) Lagartos brasileiros da familia Gekkonidae (Sauria). Arquivos de Zoologia, 17 (1), 1–84. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2176-7793.v17i1p1-84
  50. Vaz Pinto, P. & Lutondo, E. (2024) First record of red-headed picathartes Picathartes oreas in Cabinda, Angola. Bulletin Africa Bird Club, 31, 104–105.
  51. Vences, M., Multzsch, M., Gippner, S., Miralles, A., Crottini, A., Gehring, P.-S., Rakotoarison, A., Ratsoavina, F.M., Glaw, F. & Scherz, M.D. (2022) Integrative revision of the Lygodactylus madagascariensis group reveals an unexpected diversity of little brown geckos in Madagascar's rainforest. Zootaxa, 5179 (1), 1–61. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5179.1.1
  52. Vences, M., Multzsch, M., Zebre, M., Gippner, S., Andreone, F., Crottini, A., Glaw, F., Köhler, J., Rakotomanga, S., Rasamison, S. & Raselimanana, A.P. (2024) Taxonomizing a truly morphologically cryptic complex of dwarf geckos from Madagascar: molecular evidence for new species-level lineages within the Lygodactylus tolampyae complex. Zootaxa, 5468 (3), 416–448. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5468.3.2