Hemidactylus Gray

Castiglia, Riccardo, Annesi, Flavia, Bezerra, Alexandra M. R., García, Andrés & Flores-Villela, Oscar, 2010, Cytotaxonomy and DNA taxonomy of lizards (Squamata, Sauria) from a tropical dry forest in the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve on the coast of Jalisco, Mexico, Zootaxa 2508, pp. 1-29 : 12

Hemidactylus Gray

Hemidactylus , with at least 85 recognized species, is the second most specious genus of geckonid lizards. This genus is widely distributed throughout much of the Old World tropics and subtropics as well as in the Mediterranean region and in the American continents. Phylogenetic relationships within the genus have been addressed by Carranza and Arnold (2006). The ancestral lineage of the genus may have originated in Asia, which later spread to the Arabian-African region. Many species are associated with humans and are subject to passive transport as is the case with H. brookii ( sensu lato), H. mabouia , H. turcicus , H. garnotii , and H. frenatus , which colonized the Mediterranean region, tropical Africa, much of the Americas and hundreds of islands in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans.