Lygodactylus

Röll, Beate, Pinto, Pedro Vaz & Lobón-Rovira, Javier, 2024, A new species of African diurnal dwarf geckos (Gekkonidae: Lygodactylus) from the Lower Guinea rainforest, Zootaxa 5538 (6), pp. 561-574 : 570-571

Lygodactylus species groups

The genus Lygodactylus is generally arranged into different groups, based on a first subdivision provided by Pasteur (1965) and modified by subsequent authors. The L. scheffleri -group is actually composed of seven species, six of them occurring eastward of the Albertine Rift Valley in East Africa, whereas L. lobeke sp. nov. occurs westward in the Lower Guinea region.

Morphologically, L. lobeke sp. nov. shares two typical scale characters of the group, namely a double row of transversely enlarged subcaudal scales and a semi-divided mental scale, with all other members. However, it differs both in other morphological characters and in coloration. Furthermore, L. lobeke sp. nov. differs greatly in 16S uncorrected pairwise distance (> 10%) from L. laterimaculatus and L. gravis , well above the species threshold proposed by Gippner et al. (2021) and Lobón-Rovira et al. (2023) for this genus.

Interestingly, the L. scheffleri -group shares the double row of enlarged subcaudals with L. fischeri of western and central Africa, a species sometimes confused with L. scheffleri and L. conradti . However, L. fischeri is actually a member of a different group (the L. fischeri -group), which originally contained two other West African species, namely L. conraui Tornier and L. thomensis (Peters) . Pasteur (1965) erected this group as the only member of his ‘phylum guinéen’ due to the distribution of these species in western Africa. However, in doing so he deliberately ignored that the members of this group are inconsistent in typical scale characters: while L. fischeri has a double row of enlarged subcaudals and a semi-divided mental, both L. conraui and L. thomensis have only one median row with strongly enlarged subcaudals and a large, undivided mental. Judging from these scale characters, L. fischeri fits the species of the L. scheffleri- group much better. Indeed, it would seem justified to split up the ‘ L. fischeri ’-group.

To resolve the crucial points discussed above, a revision of the L. scheffleri -group is necessary. To date, only three members of the L. scheffleri -group ( L. gravis , L. laterimaculatus and L. lobeke sp. nov.) have been analyzed genetically. For all other members of the L. scheffleri -group, including its candidate member— L. fischeri —, sequence data are not yet available, but are most desirable for a revision.