New lizard species found in Mumbai
mumbai — A new species of a ground-dwelling lizard has been discovered in Goregaon’s Aarey Colony and Thane’s Badlapur forested belts, 130 years after the last such gecko was discovered, and has been named after a Bengaluru-based scientist Varad Giri.
The species, of the genus Cyrtodactylus known in Southeast Asia, India and Sri Lanka, is a member of the subgenus Geckoella, which are small ground-dwelling geckos largely found in leaf litter in forests.
“This is the result of meticulous efforts of several years by lead author Ishan Agarwal and Aaron Bauer of Villanova University, USA along with Zeeshan Mirza and Anurag Mishra of National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, and Saunak Pal of Bombay Natural History Society,” Giri said here on Tuesday. Earlier, this new species, Cyrtodactylus Varadgirii, or “Giri’s Geckoella” was considered as Geckoella Collegalensis, but based on morphological characters and DNA data, Agarwal and his colleagues have described it as a new species.
Their findings on the new species, which is distinct from other species in many characters, were published in the international scientific journal Zootaxa last week.
“This uncommon species is mostly seen moving among the leaf litter on the forest floor. They are active during night and take refuge under rocks and logs during the day. It grows the length of around 6 centimeters,” Giri said. —