Two new spotted species of the Cyrtodactylus (Geckoella) collegalensis (Beddome, 1870) complex from the south-eastern coast of India (Reptilia: Squamata)

Abstract

We describe two new spotted species of ground-dwelling gecko of the genus Cyrtodactylus (Geckoella) from southeastern India in an integrative taxonomic framework. The new species are recovered as sister taxa within the C. collegalensis species complex, with 13.0–16.7% uncorrected mitochondrial sequence divergence from the other eight members of the C. collegalensis complex and 10.4% from one another. The new species are morphologically diagnosed by a spotted dorsal pattern of four pairs of spots (occasionally fused into figure 8-shaped markings) from the banded species C. aravindi, C. speciosus, C. rishivalleyensis and C. yakhuna; and from the spotted species with three or fewer pairs of spots in C. collegalensis and C. srilekhae; and from C. chengodumalaensis by the absence of any enlarged dorsal scales and from C. varadgirii by the absence of a patch of enlarged roughly hexagonal scales on the canthus rostralis and beneath the angle of the lower jaw. The two new species can only be differentiated from each other based on slight differences in body size, relative body width and other statistically significant, size-corrected morphometric characters. These are among the first endemic lizards from Tropical Dry Evergreen habitats along the southeast coast of India.