In News
- A team of herpetologists have recorded a new species of bent-toed gecko from a wooded part of the Umroi Military Station in Meghalaya.
About Army’s bent-toed gecko
- Its scientific name is Crytodactylus exercitus and its English name is the Indian Army’s bent-toed gecko. Exercitus in Latin means army.
- The name was given to honour the Army for its services to the country.
- The military station where the bent-toed gecko was discovered was also a factor behind its name.
- Genus Cyrtodactylus: It is represented by about 320 species worldwide and is the third most speciose vertebrate genus in the world.
- The members of the genus range from South Asia to Melanesia with high diversity in south Asia. India is now home to 40 species of bent-toed gecko with the northeast accounting for 16 of them.
Image Courtesy: TH
- Other species of the lizard:
- Two more species of the lizard new to science have been named after the places of their occurrence in Mizoram
- The paper recorded another new bent-toed gecko, the Cyrtodactylus siahaensis named after Mizoram’s Siaha district where it was found.
- Most of these lizard specialists and a few others had in a separate study recorded the Cyrtodactylus lungleiensis, a new species of bent-toed gecko named after Mizoram’s Lunglei town.
- Two more species of the lizard new to science have been named after the places of their occurrence in Mizoram
Source: TH
