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Issue: Vol. 5512 No. 2: 19 Sept. 2024
Type: Article
Published: 2024-09-19
DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5512.2.8
Page range: 240-271
Abstract views: 1289
PDF downloaded: 16

New species of Gehyra (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from Papua New Guinea

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; University of Michigan Ann Arbor; Michigan 48109; U.S.A
Reptilia Gecko Gehyra oceanica Gehyra vorax Melanesia Milne Bay Province

Abstract

I describe four new species of Gehyra from New Guinea and immediately adjacent islands. Two of these are giant species that have long been misassigned to either G. vorax or G. membranacruralis; the other two were previously referred to G. oceanica. Each of the new species has a very circumscribed geographic distribution, with one being known from only a single island, a second from a small portion of southeastern New Guinea and immediately adjacent islands, a third from a small archipelago, and the fourth from foothill forest along the northern versant of eastern New Guinea. Three of these species are found only in the Milne Bay Region of southeastern Papua New Guinea, a region previously identified as having a globally high density of narrow-range endemic reptile and amphibian species. These species provide further extension of that pattern by increasing the number of known endemic herpetofaunal species from that small region to 165. Variation in subcaudal shape is taxonomically useful in Gehyra, but its character-state coding must rely on original tails because aberrant development of subcaudals in some regenerated tails could lead to mischaracterization of this feature.

 

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