First Report of Growth Rate Juvenile Tokay Gecko (Gekko gecko Linnaeus, 1758) during Twenty-four Weeks in Captive Breeding Facility

Abstract

As a conservation strategies to reduce the wild harvest of tokay geckos, captive breeding becomes one of the solution to fulfill demand market. To achieve this goal, scientific data on biological information on the growth of tokay gecko in captive breeding facility is needed to support management conservation of tokay gecko. A total of seven individual juveniles tokay gecko consisting of four males and three females were observed during 24 weeks old. We feed the juvenile of tokay gecko with 10-15 crickets every three days. We collected the growth rate data by weekly measuring Snout-vent Length (SVL), head length (HL), head width (HW) and body weight. Newly hatched tokay gecko have an SVL of 48.08 mm (44.70-53.24 mm) and weight 2.40 gram (1.90- 2.70 gram). Juvenile at the age of one to three months have a special characteristic in having a black and white bands on the tail. This characteristic fades when entering the age of more than twelve weeks. Female individuals were recorded to have smaller hatching sizes than males, but have faster growth rate (p=0.9536). For 24 weeks, male and female individuals have SVL of 70.77 mm (64.35-76.74) and 73.02 mm (67.11-80.35), respectively. Sexual dimorphism in males and females show significant results in the HW/SVL ratio (p=0.02697). Further study on the observation of growth rate during life span are needed to describe whole process of growth stage tokay gecko which is very useful for captive breeding management of this species.