Interactions between Two Species of Colonizing House Geckos, Hemidactylus turcicus and Hemidactylus garnotii

Abstract

The Mediterranean and Indo Pacific house geckos are sympatric in southern Florida, have similar size, diet and activity patterns, but have different social behavior. During laboratory observations, the parthenogenetic H. garnotii and the bisexual H. turcicus had different perch preferences, site specificity and degrees of association to other individuals. In spite of H. garnotii being more successful than H. turcicus in interspecific fights, the distribution of the former in experimental cages was more influenced than that of H. turcicus in heterospecific situations, com- pared to homospecific ones. Hemidactylus turcicus and H. garnotii have recently colonized southern Flor- ida. H. turcicus which is originally from the Middle East, is known from the Florida Keys since 1915, whereas H. gar- notti is Indo Pacific in origin and was introduced to Florida some 30 years ago (King and Krakauer, 1966). H. garnotii is an all female, triploid, parthenogenetic gecko (Kluge and Eckardt, 1969), whereas H. turcicus is bisexual. Interac- tions between individuals in sympatric populations of these two house geckos has not been studied, and only foraging activity times and reproductive cycles of H. turcicus from the U.S.A. were stud- ied in nature (King, 1958; Rose and Bar- bour, 1968). Laboratory investigations (Frankenberg, 1982a, b) showed marked differences in social behavior between