A new species of hemidactylus (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from West Africa, and comments on species hitherto confused with H. Muriceus

Abstract

We describe a new species of Hemidactylus, H. pseudomuriceus. It is very similar to H. muriceus but differs in the number of internasal granules and has a central row of enlarged instead of narrow subcaudal scales. The new species lives in primary forest and is known only from the type locality in Côte d'Ivoire and Jingwe in Cameroon. We comment on the identity and provide diagnostic characters for H. muriceus and H. echinus, two species that have been frequently confused in the past. We briefly describe new material of H. ansorgii, a species that hitherto has been known only from a few specimens. Although this species shows marked differences to H. muriceus, we believe that additional material of this taxon may be available in museum collections as misidentified H. muriceus or H. echinus. Because of frequent misidentifications, literature records for the taxa mentioned are unreliable.