#lepidodactylus

Mourning Gecko Lepidodactylus lugubris

This species is widespread in coastal regions of the Indian and Pacific oceans, including Asia, Australia, and Pacific islands. It has also been introduced to North America and Hawai'i. In the wild, they eat a varied diet of insects, spiders, amphipods, pill bugs, fruit, nectar, and pollen.

Least Concern

Come, weary doom scroller, rest your eyes on the uncomplicatedly joyous sight of this tiny gecko.

Batan Scaly-toed Gecko Lepidodactylus balioburius

A gecko from Itbayat and Batan Island, Philippines. The species occurs in primary and secondary tropical moist forests, agricultural areas and gardens in residential areas.

Lepidodactylus pollostos Karkkainen, Richards, Kraus, Tjaturadi, Krey and Oliver 2020 (6 Nov 2020 as claimed publication date) (but only apparantly made available this week in early 2021) is a name recklessly coined as a junior synonym of Adelynhosergecko (previously within Lepidodactylus) sloppi Hoser, 2018 (published 10 Aug 2018) (more than 2 years earlier). In the more recent paper, the authors justified their act of taxonomic vandalism by writing: "While this work was in preparation, a paper purporting to describe this and other species of Lepidodactylus was self-published (Hoser, 2018). Here we ignore the nomenclatural acts proposed in that work for reasons detailed elsewhere (Kaiser et al., 2013; Kaiser, 2014; Kraus, 2019)." This complete disregard for the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature by the later authors is astounding.  They are in effect putting their cohort (Kaiser et al. (AKA Wuster et al.) above that of the Code and the ICZN). The two relevant papers are:

Hoser, R. T. 2018.  A revised taxonomy of the gecko genera Lepidodactylus Fitzinger, 1843, Luperosaurus Gray, 1845 and Pseudogekko Taylor, 1922 including the formal erection of new genera and subgenera to accommodate the most divergent taxa and description of 26 new species. Australasian Journal of Herpetology 38:32-64. Published 10 August 2018.

and

Karkkainen, D. T., Richards, S. J., Kraus, F., Tjaturadi, B., Krey, L. and Oliver, P. M. 2020 A new species of small Lepidodactylus (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from Salawati Island, Indonesia. Israel Journal of Ecology and Evolution 66(3-4):180-189.

A pdf of the earlier Hoser paper can be found online here at: http://www.smuggled.com/AJH-I38-Split.htm

A Mourning gecko (Lepidodactylus lugubris) hatchling.