Lygisaurus cf. novaeguineae ( Meyer, 1874 )

Karin, Benjamin R., Stubbs, Alexander L., Arifin, Umilaela, Bloch, Luke M., Ramadhan, G., Iskandar, Djoko T., Arida, Evy, Reilly, Sean B., Kusnadi, Agus & Mcguire, Jimmy A., 2018, The herpetofauna of the Kei Islands (Maluku, Indonesia): Comprehensive report on new and historical collections, biogeographic patterns, conservation concerns, and an annotated checklist of species from Kei Kecil, Kei Besar, Tam, and Kur, Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 66, pp. 704-738 : 724-726

Lygisaurus cf. novaeguineae ( Meyer, 1874)

(Figs. 23, 24)

Type locality. Islands of the Torres Strait, Australia .

Distribution in the Kei Islands. We collected Lygisaurus on all islands surveyed, including Kei Kecil, Kei Besar, Tam, and Kur.

Natural history. This Lygisaurus species is extremely abundant in the leaf litter of shaded forest throughout the Kei Islands.

Field identification. Lygisaurus and Carlia are the only genera of lizards known from the Kei islands that have only four front toes. Lygisaurus is differentiated from the two species of Carlia present in the area by having much shorter leg length (adpressed fore and hind limbs do not contact), a smaller maximum size (SVL less than 40 mm) and generally a more fossorial build. In life, breeding male Lygisaurus can appear bright red while females vary from a uniform brown/black colouration to black with a golden bar across the back and tail.

Remarks. Originally reported from the Kei Islands as Lygosoma [= Lygisaurus ] novaeguineae Meyer, 1874 ( Roux, 1910) , the population on the Kei Islands is genetically distinctive from New Guinea samples and may represent a new species (Stubbs et al., in prep).

Fig. 23. Two different colour morphs of Lygisaurus cf. novaeguineae from Kei Kecil, showing gold morph (left; ALS 513) and a male in red breeding colouration (right; ALS 538).

Fig. 24. Variation in dorsal colour pattern in Lygisaurus cf. novaeguineae from Kei Kecil after preservation in alcohol. Upper row shows uniform dorsal colour, and bottom row displays faint dorso-lateral stripe.

capitolythos . Roux (1910) previously reported collections that he assigned to a morphologically similar species, Lygosoma [= Sphenomorphus ] muelleri , from Kei Besar that closely matches the description of S. capitolythos . Given the morphological similarity, we consider this early record of S. muelleri as the initial discovery of S. capitolythos though we have not examined the specimens.