Abstract
The Indo-Pacific Gecko, Hemidactylus garnotii Duméril & Bibron, 1836, is a species of house gecko native to Southeast Asia and Pacific Islands. As with many of its congeners, this gecko species has been accidentally introduced to other parts of the world. In January 2018, several photographs of “H. frenatus” from Colombia posted in iNaturalist.org, were noticed to have some morphological features related to H. garnotii. This discrepancy led us to inspect museum specimens and to confirm the presence of H. garnotii for more than a decade in Colombia.
Highlights
In recent decades, invasive alien species have become a global environmental issue of concern
In January 2018, several photographs of “H. frenatus” from Colombia posted in iNaturalist.org, were noticed to have some morphological features related to H. garnotii
We examined all specimens of the genus Hemidactylus (n = 38) deposited in the reptile collection of the Museo de Herpetología Universidad de Antioquia (MHUA)
Summary
Invasive alien species have become a global environmental issue of concern. The family Gekkonidae is one of the most diverse and widely distributed families of reptiles in the world, occurring throughout the tropic and temperate regions (Vitt and Caldwell 2014). Within this family, there is a cosmopolitan genus Hemidactylus, commonly known as house geckos (or salamanquejas in Spanish). There is a cosmopolitan genus Hemidactylus, commonly known as house geckos (or salamanquejas in Spanish) Many species in this genus have spread beyond their natural distribution ranges with human aid, mostly accidentally (Carranza and Arnold 2006). In the Americas, they are records of 7 introduced species from this genus: H. angulatus, H. frenatus, H. mabouia, H. garnotii, H. turcicus, H. platyurus, and H. parvimaculatus (Carranza and Arnold 2006, Caidedo-Portilla and Dulcey-Cala 2011, Meshaka 2011, Ribeiro-Júnior 2015, Erdmann 2017), of which only the first 3 have been confirmed as established in Colombia (Caidedo-Portilla and Dulcey-Cala 2011)
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