Lepidodactylus browni (Squamata, Gekkonidae) Placed in the Synonymy of L. orientalis

Abstract

Lepidodactylus browni Pernetta and Black, 1983 was described from mangrove habitat a few kilometers east of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. It was distinguished from L. orientalis Brown and Parker, 1977, described from Port Moresby, by differences in central tendency in adult snout–vent length, numbers of precloacal/femoral pores in males, and relative width of toe discs. We re-examine morphological data for these species and provide a molecular analysis of new sequences of each species to which we add existing sequences from the literature. We find large amounts of overlap between these taxa in the proposed diagnostic morphological characters and no distinction in the two between one mitochondrial and one nuclear gene. We conclude that L. browni is a junior synonym of L. orientalis and that the sole difference in central tendency in relative toe-pad width may be because of adaptation to different structural habitats.