Abstract
A new species of the Gekko (Japonigekko) japonicus group from Khammouane Province, central Laos is described based on morphological characters and molecular evidence. Morphologically, Gekko khunkhamensis sp. nov. can be distinguished from the remaining congeners by a combination of the following characters: size moderate (SVL 69.7–75.2 mm); nares in contact with rostral; internasals absent; postmentals enlarged; interorbital scales between anterior corners of the eyes 31 or 32; dorsal tubercles absent; ventrals between mental and cloacal slit 181–185; midbody scales 127–138; ventral scales 42–45; subdigital lamellae on first toe 13 or 14, on fourth toe 14 or 15; tubercles on upper surface of fore and hind limbs absent; precloacal pores absent in the male and females; postcloacal tubercles 2; tubercles absent on dorsal surface of tail base; subcaudals distinctly enlarged; dorsal surface of body with five dark grey bands, which become irregular posteriorly. Genetically, the new species is placed in a clade, consisting of G. bonkowskii, G. nadenensis, G. scientiadventura, G. sengchanthavongi, and G. thakhekensis and differs from other congeners by at least 13% in terms of pairwise distance based on a fragment of the mitochondrial ND2 gene.
References
Boulenger, G.A. (1907) Description of new lizards in the British Museum. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Series 7, 19 (7), 486–489. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222930709487278
Gray, J.E. (1842) Description of some new species of reptiles, chiefly from the British Museum collection. Zoological Miscellany, 2, 57–59.
Günther, A. (1864) The Reptiles of British India. The Ray Society, London, xxvii + 452 pp., 26 pls.
Hillis, D.M & Bull, J. (1993) An mpirical test of bootstrapping as a method for assesing confidence in phylogenetic analysis. Systematic Biology, 42 (2), 182–192. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/42.2.182
IUCN Red List (2021) IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. http://www.iucnredlist.org/ (accessed 29 October 2021)
Kearse, M., Moir, R., Wilson, A., Stones-Havas, S., Cheung, M., Sturrock, S., Buxton, S., Cooper, A., Markowitz, S., Duran, C., Thierer, T., Ashton, B., Meintjes, P. & Drummond, A. (2012) Geneious basic: An integrated and extendable desktop software platform for the organization and analysis of sequence data. Bioinformatics, 28, 1647–1649. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/bts199
Kiernan, K. (2009) distribution and character of karst in the Lao PDR. Acta Carsologica, 38 (1), 68–81. https://doi.org/10.3986/ac.v38i1.137
Le, M., Raxworthy, C.J., McCord, W.P. & Mertz, L. (2006) A molecular phylogeny of tortoises (Testudines: Testudinidae) based on mitochondrial and nuclear genes. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 40, 517−531. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2006.03.003
Liu, Y.-Z. & Zhou, K.-Y. (1982) Gekko scabridus. Pp.443–444 (446). In: Zhou, K-Y., Liu, Y-Z. & Li, D-J., Three new species of Gekko and remarks on Gekko hokouensis (Lacertiformes, Gekkonidae). Acta Zootaxonomica Sinica, 7, 438–446.
Luu V.Q., Bonkowski M., Nguyen Q.T., Le D.M., Schneider N., Ngo H.T & Ziegler T. (2016). Evolution in karst massifs: Cryptic diversity among bent-toed geckos along the Truong Son Range with descriptions of three new species and one new country record from Laos. Zootaxa 4107 (2): 101-140.
http://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4107.2.1
Luu, V.Q., Calame, T., Nguyen, T.Q., Le, M.D., Bonkowski, M. & Ziegler, T. (2014) A new species of the Gekko japonicus group (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from central Laos. Zootaxa, 3895 (1), 73−88. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3895.1.4
Luu, V.Q., Calame, T., Nguyen, T.Q., Le, M.D. & Ziegler, T. (2015) Morphological and molecular review of the Gekko diversity of Laos with descriptions of three new species. Zootaxa, 3986 (3), 279–306. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3986.3.2
Luu, V.Q., Nguyen, T.Q., Le, M.D., Bonkowski, M. & Ziegler, T. (2017) A new karst dwelling species of the Gekko japonicus group (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from central Laos. Zootaxa, 4263 (1), 179–193. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4263.1.10
Minh, B.Q., Nguyen, T. & von Haeseler, A. (2013) Ultrafast approximation for phylogenetic Bootstrap. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 30, 1188–1195. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mst024
Ngo, V.T., Pham, H.T., Phimvahan, A., David, P. & Teynié, A. (2015) Gekko aaronbaueri, a new gecko (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from central Laos. Zootaxa, 3914 (2), 144–156. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3914.2.4
Nguyen, Q.T., Wang, Y.-Y. Yang, J.-H., Lehmann, T., Le, M.D., Ziegler, T. & Bonkowski, M. (2013) A new species of the Gekko japonicus group (Squamata: Sauria: Gekkonidae) from the border region between China and Vietnam. Zootaxa, 3652 (5), 501–518. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3652.5.1
Nguyen, L.T., Schmidt, H.A., von Haeseler, A. & Bui, M.Q. (2015) IQ–TREE: A fast and effective stochastic algorithm for estimating maximum likelihood phylogenies. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 32, 268−274. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu300
Okada, Y. (1956) A new species of gekko from Shikoku, Japan. Annotationes Zoologicae Japonensis, 29, 239–241.
Ota, H., Lau, M.W., Weidenhöfer, T., Yasukawa, Y. & Bogadek, A. (1995) Taxonomic review of the geckos allied to Gekko chinensis Gray 1842 (Gekkonidae, Reptilia) from China and Vietnam. Tropical Zoology, 8, 181–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/03946975.1995.10539278
Pope, C.H. (1928) Four new snakes and a new lizard from South China. American Museum Novitates, 325, 1−4.
Posada, D. (2008) jModelTest: Phylogenetic Model Averaging. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 25, 1253–1256. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msn083
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
Rösler, H., Bauer, A.M., Heinicke, M., Greenbaum, E., Jackman, T., Nguyen, Q.T. & Ziegler, T. (2011) Phylogeny, taxonomy, and zoogeography of the genus Gekko Laurenti, 1768 with the revalidation of G. reevesii Gray, 1831 (Sauria: Gekkonidae). Zootaxa, 2989 (1), 1–50. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.2989.1.1
Rösler, H., Nguyen, Q.T., Doan, V.K., Ho, T.C., Nguyen, T.T. & Ziegler, T. (2010) A new species of the genus Gekko Laurenti (Squamata: Sauria: Gekkonidae) from Vietnam with remarks on G. japonicus (Schlegel). Zootaxa, 2329 (1), 56–68. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.2329.1.4
Rösler, H., Ziegler, T., Vu, N.T., Herrmann, H.W. & Böhme, W. (2005 “2004”) A new lizard of the genus Gekko Laurenti, 1768 (Squamata: Sauria: Gekkonidae) from the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, Quang Binh Province, Vietnam. Bonner zoologische Beiträge, 53 (1/2), 135–148.
Schlegel, H. (1836) Le Platydactyle Monarque. Platydactylus Monarchus. In: Duméril, A.M. C. & Bibron, G. (1836) Erpétologie Générale ou Histoire Naturelle Complète des Reptiles. Vol. 3. Roret, Paris, pp. 335–336.
Simmons, J.E. (2002) Herpetological collecting and collections management. Revised edition. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles. Herpetological Circular, 31, 1–153.
Smith, M.A. (1923) On a collection of reptiles and batrachians from the island of Hainan. Journal of the Natural History Society of Siam, 6, 195–212.
Swofford, D.L. (2001) PAUP*. Phylogenetic Analysis Using Parsimony (* and Other Methods). Version 4. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Massachusetts. [program]
Teynié, A. & David, P. (2010) Voyages naturalistes au Laos. Les Reptiles. Editions Revoir, Nohanent, France.
Thompson, J.D., Gibson, T.J., Plewniak, F., Jeanmougin, F. & Higgins. D.G. (1997) The ClustalX windows interface: flexible strategies for multiple sequence alignment aided by quality analysis tools. Nucleic Acids Research, 25, 4876−4882. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/25.24.4876
Toda, M., Sengoku, S., Hikida, T. & Ota, H. (2008) Description of two new species of the genus Gekko (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from the Tokara and Amami Island Groups in the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan. Copeia, 2008, 452–466. https://doi.org/10.1643/CH-06-281
Uetz, P., Freed, P., Aguilar, R. & Hošek, J. (Eds.) (2021) The Reptile Database, http://www.reptile-database.org, accessed [10 October 2021]
Wood, P.L., Guo, X., Travers, S.L., Su, Y.-C., Olson, K.V., Bauer, A.M., Grismer, L.L., Siler, C.D., Moyle, R.G., Andersen, M.J. & Brown, R.F. (2020) Parachute geckos free fall into synonymy: Gekko phylogeny, and a new subgeneric classification, inferred from thousands of ultraconserved elements. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 146, 106731. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2020.106731
Yang, J.-H. (2015) A new species of the genus Gekko Laurenti (Squamata: Sauria: Gekkonidae) from Guangxi, China. Zootaxa, 3936 (2), 287–295. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3936.2.9.
Yang, J.-H., Wang, Y.-Y., Zhang, T.-D., Sun, Y.-J. & Lin, S.-S. (2012) Genetic and morphological evidence on the species validity of Gekko melli Vogt, 1922 with notes on its diagnosis and range extension (Squamata: Gekkonidae). Zootaxa, 3505 (1), 67–74. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3505.1.5
Zhou, K.-Y. & Li, D.-J. (1982) Gekko liboensis. In: Zhou, K.-Y., Liu, Y.-Z. & Li, D.-J. (Eds.), Three new species of Gekko and remarks on Gekko hokouensis (Lacertiformes, Gekkonidae). Acta Zootaxonomica Sinica, 7, pp. 440–441 (445).
Zhou, K.-Y. & Liu, Y.-Z. (1982) Gekko auriverrucosus. In: Zhou, K.-Y., Liu, Y.-Z. & Li, D.-J. (Eds.), Three new species of Gekko and remarks on Gekko hokouensis (Lacertiformes, Gekkonidae). Acta Zootaxonomica Sinica, 7, pp.438–440 (445).
Zhou, K. & Wang, Q. (2008) New species of Gekko (Squamata: Sauria: Gekkonidae) from China: morphological and molecular evidence. Zootaxa, 1778 (1), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.1778.1.5