THOOTHUKUDI: A new species of geckos have been discovered by biologists in the Agasthyamalai hill range of the southern Western Ghats in the Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu.
Christened as Cyrtodactylus aravindi, the species has been named after a Bengaluru-based malacologist Dr N A Aravind who is a Senior Fellow at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology (ATREE).
These nocturnal species are found at Muppandal near Aralvaimozhi pass and Thuckalay which is located 20 km away from each other on the Agasthaymalai hill range in the southern western ghats.
The study was published on August 19, 2022 and authored by Surya Narayanan, Sandeep Das, Amirtha Balan, Roshin Tom, Nitin Divakar, Rajkumar Kp, P Hopeland and V Deepak. It was published in Vertebrate Zoology, which is a German-based journal.
These geckos were first photographed by Hopeland at Donavur fellowship campus in Muppandal in 2017, and later in 2021 by Roshin Tom at the rubber estate in Thuckalay, Kanyakumari district.
There are at least 330 nominal species of geckos in the Cyrtodactylus genus and they are distributed largely in south and southeast Asia as well as the Western Pacific Islands.
The lead author Surya Narayanan, told TNIE the geckos of the collegalensis complex are described from areas that are above 10° N latitude. So the researchers investigated the population of the species below 10° N latitude in the western ghats, which is known for its rich biodiversity. "The photographs taken by Hopeland and Tom aided our research," he said.
Surya said that this gecko appears to be an uncommon species. "Though, C aravindi seems to occur in lower density in open scrub habitat, the gecko prefers areas with high grass, shrubs and tree cover with open edges," he said.
The geographical distribution of the species has to be studied. Researchers determined this was a new species of gecko based on morphological study and the comparison of the molecular DNA analysis with 18 different species of a particular group of geckos.