Two new species of Gecko, recorded by a group of researchers in Northeast

The new find in Meghalaya has been named Cyrtodactylus exercitus. Exercitus in Latin means army and it was found in Umroi Military Station in the state. The new species from Mizoram has a scientific name Cyrtodactylus Siamensis and the English name Siaha bent-toed gecko. The species was named after Siaha. Locally, the Gecko shall be called the Indian Army’s bent-toed gecko. The genus Cyrtodactylus is represented by around 320 species worldwide and is the third most found species vertebrate genus in the globe. Northeast India is now home to 16species of bent-toed gecko.

As a part of ongoing research to uncover herpetofauna diversity of Northeast India, a team of researchers —have discovered the two new species of bent- toed gecko. The Findings of the study are published in the European Journal of Taxonomy. The New species are a part of the Cyrtodactylus khasiensis group. Both species represent the highland clade within the south Brahmaputra clade ofIndo- Burmese Cyrtodactylus. Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution.

In 2019, researchers discovered six new species of bent-toed geckos, a type of small lizard, from the Northeast and one of them is from Guwahati. While researchers found the Guwahati bent-toed gecko (Cyrtodactylus guwahatiensis, named after the city) near a small hillock in the urban sprawl of Guwahati city, theKaziranga bent-toed gecko, the Jaintia bent-toed gecko and the Nagaland Bent- toed gecko have been discovered from Assam’s Kaziranga National Park, the Jaintia hills of Meghalaya and Khonoma village in Nagaland, respectively.

The Abhayapuri bent-toed gecko is currently found only in the vicinity of Abhayapuri town in Assam’s Bongaigaon district, and the Jampui bent- toed gecko,only in Tripura’s Jampui Hills. All the new lizards belong to the genus Cyrtodactylus and are called bent-toed or bow-fingered geckos, named after their bent toes.

At least 353 new species have been discovered in the Eastern Himalayas between 1998 and 2008, equating to an average of 35 new species finds every year for the last 10 years. The discoveries include 242 plants, 16 amphibians, 16 reptiles, 14 fish, 2 birds and 2 mammals, and at least 61 new invertebrates. The Eastern Himalayas is at the crossroads of two continental plates represented by two biogeographical realms: the lowland Indo-Malayan Realm and to the north, the elevated Palearctic Realm. The meeting of these worlds has created one of the biologically richest areas on Earth. Spanning Bhutan, the North-eastern Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, North Bengal and Sikkim, the far north of Myanmar (Burma), Nepal and southern parts of Tibet, the region includes four Global 200 ecoregions with their critical landscapes of international biological importance.

Source: Himalayan News Chronicle