Hemidactylus brookii

Lajmi, Aparna, Giri, Varad B. & Karanth, K. Praveen, 2016, Molecular data in conjunction with morphology help resolve the Hemidactylus brookii complex (Squamata: Gekkonidae), Organisms Diversity & Evolution (New York, N. Y.) 16 (3), pp. 659-677 : 673-674

Status of Hemidactylus brookii sensu stricto

From this study it is clear that the sample of ‘ H. brookii ’ from Borneo by Bauer et al. (2010a) and thought to be H. brookii sensu stricto is a human commensal, H. murrayi . The cyt b sequence of H. murrayi from Borneo is completely identical to sample no. 71 to 74 (ref. Table 1). Furthermore, none of the morphological characters of the clades studied here correspond to H. brookii sensu stricto. The pertinent question yet to be addressed is what is the distribution of H. brookii sensu stricto? Mahony (2011) mentions that the type series comprises three specimens — specimen BMNH 1947.3.6.47 and BMNH 1947.3.6.48 from Borneo and BMNH 1947.3.6.49 from Australia. Upon examination of the specimens, the author concluded that BMNH 1947.3.6.47 and BMNH 1947.3.6.49 belong to one morphotype, while the other specimen from Borneo belongs to a different morphotype— H. tenkatei . Mahony also designated BMNH 1947.3.6.47 as the lectotype of H. brookii . Given that H. murrayi is also found in Borneo, we think that this is not a case of mistagging, but both these morphotypes are found in Borneo, and the specimen BMNH 1947.3.6.48 represents H. murrayi , while the specimens 1947.3.6.47 and 1947.3.6.49 represent B true brookii^.

This study indicates the presence of two human commensals in India, H. murrayi and H. parvimaculatus . H. murrayi seems to have expanded its range eastwards into Southeast Asia— Myanmar, peninsular Malaysia, and East Malaysia, whereas H. parvimaculatus has dispersed westward towards Mauritius. Interestingly, these two commensals are not sister to each other. In the tree based on the combined dataset, the commensals branch with non-commensals and these nodes received high supports ( Fig. 2 ). Furthermore, the SH test does not support the sister relationship of the commensals. These results suggest that characters associated with commensalism have evolved independently in the two species.

Figures

Fig. 2 Maximum Likelihood (ML) tree based on mitochondrial and nuclear data. The values on each node represent ML bootstrap value/ Bayesian posterior probability. Support values below 50/0.5 have been denoted as ‘-’. Voucher numbers of sequences obtained from NCBI are