Hemidactylus brookii

Mahony, Stephen, 2011, Taxonomic revision of Hemidactylus brookii Gray: a re-examination of the type series and some Asian synonyms, and a discussion of the obscure species Hemidactylus subtriedrus Jerdon (Reptilia: Gekkonidae), Zootaxa 3042, pp. 37-67 : 41

Asian Hemidactylus brookii synonyms examined

As it was common practice in the 1800s, numerous taxonomists were actively describing species, often with little or no comparison to similar species already known to science at the time (e.g., Tytler 1865). For those taxonomists not working at large museums, there was little opportunity to compare their suspected new species directly with those already described from other countries. This problem was further complicated due to the fact that many of the early species descriptions consisted of a short paragraph providing little to identify the given species from congeners. The description of H. brookii from what is now understood to be likely an introduced population on the island of Borneo, understandably was overlooked by taxonomists then working on the herpetofauna of the distant countries of India, Pakistan and Myanmar. This resulted in the description of several species which were later considered to represent a highly variable and poorly defined species, Hemidactylus brookii s.l.