Afroedura africana, Boulenger, 1888

Jacobsen, Niels H. G., Kuhn, Arianna L., Jackman, Todd R. & Bauer, Aaron M., 2014, A phylogenetic analysis of the southern African gecko genus Afroedura Loveridge (Squamata: Gekkonidae), with the description of nine new species from Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces of South Africa, Zootaxa 3846 (4), pp. 451-501 : 469-470

A. africana ( Boulenger, 1888)

Distribution. Erongo Region, west central Namibia ( Mouton & Mostert 1985; Griffin 2003) ( Fig. 4 ).

Remarks. Since the work of Haacke (1965) A. africana has been considered a polytypic species (e.g., Branch et al. 1988; Rösler 2000; Kluge 2001; Griffin 2003). We here consider A. africana as a monotypic central Namibian endemic (see below). All three of our genetic samples originate from the Erongo Region of central Namibia and are thus presumably referable to A. africana sensu stricto. However, the levels of divergence among these samples (up to 19.34%) are comparable to or greater than interspecific differences elsewhere in the genus ( Fig. 1 ), suggesting that further study of this taxon is required.

Figures

FIGURE 1. Maximum likelihood phylogram of Afroedura relationships derived from two genes (ND 2, RAG 1). Support values are presented as maximum likelihood bootstraps (MLBS) / Bayesian posterior probabilities (BPP) / parsimony bootstraps (PBS). Only most closely related outgroup taxa are shown. Images (top to bottom) of representative Afroedura species groups: A. hawequensis, A. pondolia, A. karroica, A. loveridgei, A. haackei, A. marleyi, A. granitica sp. nov.

FIGURE 4. Map of southern Africa showing the approximate distributional ranges of previously described species of Afroedura. Red dots represent localities sampled for the genetic portion of the study. Ranges based on Branch (1998) and Bates et al. (2014) as well as unpublished data. Taxon names follow the conclusions of this paper. Area demarcated by a dashed line is presented in more detail in Figure 6.