Dwarfs of the fortress: A new cryptic species of dwarf gecko of the genus Cnemaspis Strauch, 1887 (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from Rajgad fort in the northern Western Ghats of Maharashtra, India

Amit Sayyed,Vivek Philip Cyriac,Shauri Sulakhe,Anish Pardeshi

doi:10.3897/evolsyst.5.62929

Abstract

A new species of the genus Cnemaspis Strauch, 1887 is described from the Rajgad fort in the northern Western Ghats of Maharashtra, India. The new species, belonging to the flaviventralis clade, is one of the smallest known Indian Cnemaspis and can be distinguished from other congeners by its genetic distinctiveness and few key morphological characters. The new species can be diagnosed from all other Indian congeners by its small body size (SVL &lt; 27 mm), the absence of conical and spine-like tubercles on flank; heterogeneous dorsal pholidosis; presence of only femoral pores and no precloacal pores in males; weakly keeled scales on the ventral surface of neck, pectoral, abdominal region and limbs; granular scales on the tail with whorls of slightly enlarged, strongly keeled tubercles; and the absence of enlarged median subcaudal scales. The new species is currently known to inhabit the man-made historical structures from a single locality in Rajgad, Maharashtra, where it is presumed to be uncommon.

Highlights

Western Ghats of India is a known global biodiversity hotspot with high levels of endemism (Myers et al 2000)
Within the girii clade, (C. girii + C. koynaensis) and C. limayei formed a strongly supported clade which together was sister to C. mahabali with strong support
The morphospace of C. ajijae and C. flaviventralis showed partial overlap along PC1 and PC3, the new species was outside the 95% confidence interval estimated for the morphospace of C. ajijae and C. flaviventralis. Given these data and those from the phylogenetic analyses we describe the new population from Rajgad fort as a new species and describe the same below

Summary

Introduction

Western Ghats of India is a known global biodiversity hotspot with high levels of endemism (Myers et al 2000). The Western Ghats (WG) is a long but interrupted chain of mountains stretching from southern Gujarat to the southern part of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. This long mountain chain is interrupted by three main gaps, which divide the WG into the northern, central and southern WG. The diversity of Cnemaspis is exceptionally high in the NWG and recent studies have been describing several new species from the region (Sayyed et al 2016, 2018; Khandekar et al 2019; Sayyed and Sulakhe 2020).

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