Three more novel species of South Asian Cnemaspis Strauch, 1887 (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

We describe three distinct, small-bodied, scansorial species of south Asian Cnemaspis from Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, India—Cnemaspis azhagusp. nov. from Thirukurungudi forest range, Cnemaspis mundanthuraiensissp. nov. from Mundanthurai forest range and Cnemaspis kalakadensissp. nov. from Kalakad forest range. Phylogenetic analyses using a partial sequence of the mitochondrial ND2 gene and general morphology places each of the three new species in the beddomei, gracilis and littoralis clades, respectively. The three new species are diagnosed from all other described members of their respective clades by a suite of differing morphological characters including snout vent length, number of dorsal tubercle rows at mid-body, number of paravertebral tubercles, presence or absence of spine-like scales on flanks, number of ventral scales across belly at mid-body, number of ventral scales from mental to anterior border of cloaca, number of lamellae under digit IV of pes, number of femoral and/or precloacal pores and poreless scales separating these series, as well as subtle colouration differences. We also provide some novel characters of tail tuberculation of the three new species described herein. With the discovery of these three new species, eight species of geckos including five Cnemaspis are now known to be endemic to KMTR.

A new species of Cyrtodactylus (Reptilia: Gekkonidae) from the southern Western Ghats of India

“…Description of yet another species of Cyrtodactylus from the Agasthyamalai landscape makes it the fourth Cyrtodactylus for Tamil Nadu state. The southern tip of the Western Ghats (Agasthyamalai) is known for its endemic reptilian fauna and multiple new species were described recently, both in the mountains (Krishnan 2008;Mallik et al 2019;Mallik et al 2021) as well as in the lowlands (Harikrishnan et al 2012;Srikanthan et al 2018;Narayanan et al 2021;Pal et al 2021;Khandekar et al 2022). This highlights the hidden species diversity in this landscape and shows the poor exploration of these wellknown hill ranges.…”

A new species of rupicolous Cnemaspis Strauch, 1887 (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from the Biligirirangan Hills of Southern India

“…Comparative data for the species from monticola, gracilis and mysorensis clades were obtained from the lit-erature (Manamendara-Arachchi et al 2007;Khandekar 2019;Agarwal et al 2020b;Pal et al 2021;Khandekar et al 2022aKhandekar et al , 2022b. Museum abbreviations: BNHS: Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India; ZSI-R: Zoological Survey of India, Kolkatta, India; ZSI-SRC: Southern Regional Centre, Zoological Survey of India, Chennai, India.…”

“…The gekkonid genus Cnemaspis Strauch, 1887 is one of the most speciose groups of geckos in the world, with 192 known species distributed across the south and southeast Asia, of which around 100 species are known from peninsular India (including the Western Ghats) and 40 from Sri Lanka (Uetz et al 2022). Among these, 59 species from India were described in the last two decades (Cyriac et al 2020;Pal et al 2021;Sayyed et al 2021;Khandekar et al 2021Khandekar et al , 2022aKhandekar et al , 2022b. Recent studies provided novel insights and added to our understanding of the cryptic diversity, biogeography and diversification of Cnemaspis (Manamendra-Arachchi et al 2007;Agarwal et al 2020a;Agarwal et al 2021;Pal et al 2021).…”

“…Although many of these descriptions are primarily from the Western Ghats (Pal et al 2021;Cyriac et al 2020), followed by some parts of the Eastern Ghats (Agarwal et al 2020b and the Mysore plateau (Khandekar et al 2022a), many parts of the latter regions remain poorly studied. Pal et al (2021) recently divided the peninsular Indian and Sri Lankan Cnemaspis into ten different nominal clades based on molecular and morphological data.…”

A multitude of spots! Five new microendemic species of the Cnemaspis gracilis group (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from massifs in the Shevaroy landscape, Tamil Nadu, India

“…South Asian Cnemaspis originated in the Western Ghats in the Paleocene-Eocene and are largely restricted to cool habitats (Agarwal et al 2020b), 10 of the 13 broad clades within the group endemic to peninsular India and seven of these to the Western Ghats (Pal et al 2021;Khandekar et al 2022a). Of the three clades that are distributed outside the Western Ghats, the bangara and mysoriensis clades with four and seven species, respectively, are restricted to the southern edge of the Mysore Plateau and associated hills; and only the C. gracilis clade with six species is distributed in both the Western Ghats and other parts of peninsular India (Agarwal et al 2021b;Pal et al 2021;Khandekar et al 2022aKhandekar et al , 2022b.…”