Hemidactylus nzingae Ceríaco, Agarwal, Marques, and Bauer, 2020

Conradie, Werner, Keates, Chad, Verburgt, Luke, Baptista, Ninda L., Harvey, James, Júlio, Timóteo & Neef, Götz, 2022, Contributions to the herpetofauna of the Angolan Okavango-Cuando-Zambezi River drainages. Part 2: Lizards (Sauria), chelonians, and crocodiles, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation (e 322) 16 (2), pp. 181-214 : 192

Hemidactylus nzingae Ceríaco, Agarwal, Marques, and Bauer, 2020

Queen Nzinga’s Tropical Gecko ( Fig. 10 , Map 10) Material (2 specimens): PEM R23990 (iNaturalist 12128372), Rio Cuquema, downstream, -12.47021° 16.82334°, 1,644 m asl; PEM R23991, Rio Cuquema, upstream, -12.46902° 16.82415°, 1,640 m asl. Description: 58–66 dorsal midbody scale rows; 16 longitudinal rows of enlarged keeled tubercles; 25 ventral midbody scale rows; 9–10 supralabials; 8–9 infralabials; 7 divided scansors under 4 th toe; 3/3 precloacal pores in a single row. Largest male: 40.2 + 37.9 mm (PEM R23991). Habitat and natural history notes: Specimens were found actively running on the ground during the day. Comment: This species was only recently described and seems to be common in miombo woodland on the Angolan plateau ( Ceríaco et al. 2020a; Lobón-Rovira et al. 2021). In a follow-up study, ‘unpatterned’ specimens that occur sympatrically with H. nzingae were described as a new species, H. hannahsabinae ( Ceríaco et al. 2020b) . The addition of more material, with some from this study including these ‘unpatterned’ specimens, showed that the latter taxon is a junior synonym of H. nzingae ( Lobón-Rovira et al. 2021) .

Figures

Fig. 10. Adult male Hemidactylus nzingae (PEM R23991) from Cuquema River. Photo by Werner Conradie.