A new species of Hemiphyllodactylus (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from Ha Giang Province, Vietnam

By

Luu, Vinh
Nguyen, Thuong Huyen
Do, Quyen Hanh
Pham, Cuong The
Hoang, Tuoi Thi
Nguyen, Quang Truong
Le, Minh Duc, 1973-
Ziegler, Thomas
Grismer, Jesse
Grismer, Lee

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2023

Original Publication

ZooKeys

Volume

1167

Pages

353--382

Subjects

Genetics , Hemiphyllodactylus lungcuensis sp. nov , integrative approach , karst forest , Morphology , Southeast Asia

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1167.103713

 

Abstract

An integrative analysis recovered a new species of the Hemiphyllodactylus typus group from a karst formation in Lung Cu Commune, Dong Van District, Ha Giang Province, northeastern Vietnam. Hemiphyllodactylus lungcuensissp. nov. is embedded within clade 6 of the typus group, bearing an uncorrected pairwise sequence divergence of 4.6–20.2% from all other species based on a 1,038 base pair segment of the mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase subunit 2 gene (ND2). It is diagnosable from other species in clade 6 by statistically significant mean differences in normalized morphometric, meristic, and categorical characters. A multiple factor analysis using the three aforementioned character types recovered its unique, non-overlapping placement in morphospace as statistically significantly different from that of all other species in clade 6. The description of this new Hemiphyllodactylus species contributes to a growing body of literature underscoring the high degree of herpetological diversity and endemism in karst landscapes in Vietnam as well as in the genus Hemiphyllodactylus.