Two new species of the Cnemaspis galaxia complex (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from the eastern slopes of the southern Western Ghats

By

Khandekar, Akshay
Thackeray, Tejas
Agarwal, Ishan

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2024

Original Publication

ZooKeys

Volume

1196

Pages

209--242

Subjects

Asia , Biodiversity hotspot , dwarf geckos , integrative taxonomy , Phylogeny , species complex

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1196.117947

 

Abstract

Two new species allied to Cnemaspis galaxia are described from the eastern slopes of the south Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu, India. Both new species are members of the ornata subclade within the beddomei clade. The two new species can be easily distinguished from all other members of the beddomei clade and each other by a combination of nonoverlapping morphological characters such as small body size, distinct colouration of both sexes, the number of dorsal tubercles around the body, the number or arrangement of paravertebral tubercles, the number of midventral scales across the belly and longitudinal ventral scales from mental to cloaca, besides uncorrected pairwise ND2 and 16S sequence divergence of ≥ 7.4% and ≥ 2.7%. The two new species are distributed from low elevation, deciduous forests of Srivilliputhur, and add to the five previously known endemic vertebrates from Srivilliputhur-Megamalai Tiger Reserve.