A new species of Hemidactylus (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from Príncipe Island, Gulf of Guinea, West Africa with comments on the African-Atlantic clade of Hemidactylus geckos

Abstract

The remote oceanic Gulf of Guinea islands of São Tomé and Príncipe are home to a highly endemic herpetofauna, which has become the focus of modern, on-going scientific analysis only during the past decade. Until now, the endemic Hemidactylus greeffi Bocage 1886 (Greeff's giant gecko) has been considered to occur on both islands. Herein, we employ both new and previously published molecular data, along with differences in morphological characters, to demonstrate that the Príncipe populations are a full species distinct from H. greeffi. We describe the new species and restrict the range of H. greeffi to the island of São Tomé. The original unnumbered holotype of H. greeffii held in the Museu Bocage was destroyed in Lisbon and we have been unable to determine the collection provenance of unnumbered material treated by subsequent authors. We therefore designate a neotype for H. greeffi from California Academy of Science collections and provide morphological information on that species additional to that of earlier workers, based upon 14 specimens collected in various localities on São Tomé during the past decade.

Keywords:

• Squamata
• Gekkonidae
• Hemidactylus
• São Tomé
• Príncipe
• Gulf of Guinea Islands
• new species
• neotype

Acknowledgements

The first CAS Gulf of Guinea expedition (2001) was funded by the G. Lindsay Field Research and In-House Research Funds (CAS), the second (2006) by the Hagey Venture Fund (CAS) and the third (2008) and all subsequent expeditions have been supported by the generous donations of private individuals, to all of whom we are greatly indebted. Significant logistical support on the third and subsequent expeditions has been provided by Africa's Eden (Société de Conservation et Développement), and E.N. Seligman, R. dos Santos and Q. Quade of STeP UP, São Tomé. We are grateful to Arlindo Carvalho, Director General of the Ministry of Environment and his colleagues, Victor Bonfim and Salvador Pontes, for ongoing assistance and permission to collect and export our samples. Dr José Jesus (University of Madeira) kindly shared his DNA sequences with us and we are indebted to Drs David Gower and Mark Wilkinson (Natural History Museum, London), Drs Aaron Bauer (Villanova University), Anthony Russell (University of Calgary) David Blackburn (CAS), and Jose Rosado (Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard) for valuable information and advice. Dr Luiz Rocha (CAS) and an anonymous reviewer provided the Portuguese translation of the abstract. Dr Peter Roopnarine provided statistical help, Jon Fong (CAS) produced radiographs and Gertrude Morin (CAS) did important literature searches for us. Photographs of H. greeffi in life were by Dong Lin (CAS); those of H. principensis in life were made by Wesley Eckerman. BK-100 Visionary Digital equipment was purchased under an NSF grant (DBI 0754804) to RCD. The first author's research was supported by an NSF REU grant (DBI 0754804) to Dr Rich Mooi (CAS).