Six new gecko species found in Western Ghats

PUNE: Scientists have found six new species of the endemic genus of Dravidogecko in the Western Ghats.
The six new species have been named Dravidogecko septentrionalis, D janakiae (in honour of Janaki Ammal, a botanist from Kerala), D tholpalli, D meghamalaiensis, D douglasadamsi (in honour of British author and satirist, Douglas Noel Adams) and D smithi (in honour of British herpetologist Malcolm Arthur Smith).
These geckos are nocturnal, exceptionally good climbers and prefer setting up their homes in tree trunks and abandoned structures. The findings were recently published in the international taxonomic journal Zootaxa.
Speaking to TOI, Pune-based Varad Giri, one of the team members, said the discovery was significant. “It is one of the oldest geckos that evolved in India. Around 58 million years ago, this gecko evolved and diversified into various parts of India. Until recently, only one species was known and the genus is endemic to the Western Ghats. This was the Dravidogecko anamallensis.”
Lead researcher R Chaitanya’s investigative expeditions in the Western Ghats led to the discovery that these geckos were very habitat specific and confined to a particular habitat. He collected them and made a close examination of their DNA, looked at their taxonomy and identification characteristics. After thorough investigations, he realised that it is more than one species. Altogether six new species have been described.
Chaitanya, a Bengaluru-based IT engineer turned independent researcher, said, “We started examining this genus in 2015. In 1875, Albert Günther, a British-German herpetologist first described the species in this group, naming it Dravidogecko anamallensis as it was found in the Anaimalai hills.”
After Chaitanya and his team conducted fieldwork in the Western Ghats, they came across the different species. “We’ve been encountering these geckos in various places, not just Anaimalai, for long. So, we realised that this cannot be just one species, because they’re found in so many places in the Western Ghats,” he added. Their study led them to collect geckos from other places in the Western Ghats.
The other team members were Deepak Veerappan, Natural History Museum, London, Aniruddha Datta-Roy, National Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhubaneswar, BHCK Murthy, Zoological Survey of India, Kozhikode and Praveen Karanth from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.