A new species of Hemidactylus Goldfuss, 1820 (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from the Northern Eastern Ghats, Odisha, India

By

Mohapatra, Pratyush P
Ray, Sumidh
Das, Ashis K.
Bhupathi, Bharath
Sarkar, Vivek
Mohalik, Rakesh K.
Nair, Manoj V
Dutta, Sushil K.

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2025-12-1

Original Publication

Herpetozoa

Volume

38

Pages

365--378

Subjects

Deccan Peninsula , Eastern Highlands , Hemidactylus kangerensis , Hemidactylus sushilduttai , Morphology , taxonomy

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/herpetozoa.38.e175753

 

Abstract

<br> We describe a new species of large-bodied, rock-dwelling gecko of the genus<br> Hemidactylus<br> from the Eastern Ghats of Odisha, India. The new species is genetically distinct, as already indicated in previous studies, and differs from all other congeners in a combination of morphological characters, such as dorsal scalation of small granules intermixed with large, pointed, trihedral tubercles that form 15–19 fairly regularly arranged longitudinal rows at midbody; 9–11 subdigital lamellae below the first and 12–14 below the fourth digit; 22–26 femoral pores separated by five poreless scales in males; and 11–13 supralabials and 9–11 infralabials. The new species is from the Eastern Ghats clade of large-bodied, tuberculated<br> Hemidactylus<br> and can be readily diagnosed morphologically from the two sister species,<br> H. sushilduttai<br> and<br> H. kangerensis<br> , in having characters such as the second postmental distinct and ~70% of the first postmental; the first postmental touching infralabial I and the second postmental touching infralabials I and II; and one post-cloacal spur on each side. The new species is distributed in the northern Eastern Ghats range of Odisha, inhabiting moist and dry deciduous forests and rock boulders and occasionally entering human habitations.<br>