Hemidactylus cf. brookii Gray, 1845:153

Wagner, Philipp, Bauer, Aaron M., Leviton, Alan E., Wilms, Thomas M. & Böhme, Wolfgang, 2016, A Checklist of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Afghanistan *, Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 63 (13), pp. 457-565 : 487

Hemidactylus cf. brookii Gray, 1845:153

1845 Hemidactylus brookii Gray , Catalogue of the Specimens of Lizards in the Collection of the British Museum. Trustees of the British Museum, London, United Kingdom. xxviii + 289 pp.

LECTOTYPE.— BMNH 1947.3.6. 47 (formerly BM RR 1934.9.1. 49 [.21.a]), from “Borneo”; designated by Mahony (2011).

LOCALITIES.— Kabul (ZFMK 8694–5) [ Fig. 14 ; see pl. 6, fig. 5 for distribution].

REMARKS.— This species is not mentioned for Afghanistan by Sindaco and Jeremčenko (2008). The identity and distribution of true H. brookii remains problematic. Gray’s types were from “ Australia ” and “Borneo.” The Australian locality has been dismissed as an error and Bornean populations have only recently been rediscovered (Das and Jensen 2006; Das and Sukumaran 2007), but it has been argued that the current population represents a different species than the type specimen (Kathriner et al. 2014). Current Bornean populations are conspecific with a H. brookii type gecko that occurs in India and in scattered lcoalities from Myanmar eastwards to the Lesser Sundas (Bauer et al. 2010) which has most recently been identified as H. murrayi (Lajmi et al. 2016) . Mahony (2011) resurrected several species occurring in South Asia from the synonymy of H. brookii , including Hemidactylus gleadow . Most of the currently recognized members of the H. brookii complex appear to have broad distributions within India and adjacent countries and it is likely that all or most have been established in parts of their ranges by human agency. Purely on the basis of proximity, H. kushmorensis most closely approaches Afghanistan, with populations in Kashmir, India (Lajmi et al. 2016) and presumably in adjacent northern Pakistan, although not in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas immediately adjacent to Afghanistan (Masroor 2012). However, this is still a gap of approximately 250 km and, as the Kabul specimens are likely representative of an introduced population (it seems inconceivable that such anthropophilic geckos would have been missed by earlier workers were they present in the capitol), the source population could be at any distance away. Additional morphological data as well as DNA samples will be needed to determine if the material from Kabul can be assigned to one of the currently recognized Pakistani or Indian taxa, or if it represents a so far undescribed species of the complex.

Figures

FIGURE 14: Hemidactylus cf. brookii from Kabul. Photo by P. Wagner.