Abstract
We describe two new species of Cyrtodactylus Gray, 1827, each from the Indian states of Meghalaya and Mizoram based on morphology and ND2 gene sequences. The new species are a part of the Cyrtodactylus khasiensis group. Both species represent the highland clade within the south of Brahmaputra clade of Indo-Burmese Cyrtodactylus. Based on ND2 gene sequence, the species from Meghalaya have an uncorrected p-distance of 4.21%–4.25% from a lowland species C. guwahatiensis Agarwal, Mahony, Giri, Chaitanya & Bauer, 2018 and is a sister taxon to C. septentrionalis Agarwal, Mahony, Giri, Chaitanya & Bauer, 2018. The species from Mizoram differ from its sister species C. bengkhuaiai Purkayastha, Lalremsanga, Bohra, Biakzuala, Decemson, Muansanga, Vabeiryureilai, Chauhan & Rathee, 2021 by a p-distance of 8.33%.
Highlights
The genus Cyrtodactylus Gray, 1827 is represented by around 320 species worldwide and is the third most speciose vertebrate genus in the world (Grismer et al 2021)
We describe two new species of Cyrtodactylus Gray, 1827, each from the Indian states of Meghalaya and Mizoram based on morphology and ND2 gene sequences
Based on ND2 gene sequence, the species from Meghalaya have an uncorrected p-distance of 4.21%–4.25% from a lowland species C. guwahatiensis Agarwal, Mahony, Giri, Chaitanya & Bauer, 2018 and is a sister taxon to C. septentrionalis Agarwal, Mahony, Giri, Chaitanya & Bauer, 2018
Summary
The genus Cyrtodactylus Gray, 1827 is represented by around 320 species worldwide and is the third most speciose vertebrate genus in the world (Grismer et al 2021). All the species of Cyrtodactylus described from Northeast India are members of the C. khasiensis group (Grismer et al 2021) which may be further sub-divided into highland and lowland clades (Agarwal et al 2018b). It is presumed that the Brahmaputra river acts as a barrier for the dispersal of species and most of the species described from Northeast India are part of south of the Brahmaputra clade except for the species from Arunachal Pradesh including C. arunachalensis. We describe a new species each from the state of Meghalaya and Mizoram (Fig. 1). Both species are part of the C. khasiensis group and members of south of Brahmaputra in the highland clade
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