Burmese Hemidactylus (Reptilia, Squamata, Gekkonidae): Geographic Variation in the Morphology of Hemidactylus bowringii in Myanmar and Yunnan, China

Six species of the gecko genus Hemidactylus are reported currently from Myanmar. This genus, in the family Gekkonidae, is the most geographically widespread and one of the most speciose. Morphological analysis within one Burmese species, H. bowringii, is concordant with the geographic pattern of genetic differentiation revealed by Carranza’s and Arnold’s (2006) phylogram based on mtDNA sequence data. Our analysis shows additional foci of regional differentiation within Burmese H. bowringii at other localities not included in the aforementioned phylogeny. The regional differentiation among the populations examined indicates that two species occur in central and northern Myanmar. One species occurs across northern Myanmar from Sagaing and Kachin into western China and southward east of the Ayeyarwady River to at least the Bago-Mandalay division border; the southern species occurs from west of the Ayeyarwady River from central Magway to Yangon. Neither of these two populations appears conspecific with Hong Kong H. bowringii (type-locality), hence each is recognized as a new species. Hemidactylus bowringii proper is the species occurring in South China. The status of Hemidactylus berdmorei (Blyth, 1853), an assumed synonym of H. bowringii, of southern Tanintharyi remains unresolved.