A new species of Hemiphyllodactylus (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from Ha Giang Province, Vietnam
Vinh Quang Luu, Thuong Huyen Nguyen, Quyen Hanh, Cuong The Pham, Tuoi Thi Hoang, Truong Quang Nguyen, Minh Đức Lê, Thomas Ziegler, Jesse L. Grismer, L. Lee Grismer
Abstract
An integrative analysis recovered a new species of the Hemiphyllodactylus typus group from a karst formation in Lung Cu Commune, Dong Van District, Ha Giang Province, northeastern Vietnam. Hemiphyllodactylus lungcuensis sp. nov. is embedded within clade 6 of the typus group, bearing an uncorrected pairwise sequence divergence of 4.6–20.2% from all other species based on a 1,038 base pair segment of the mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase subunit 2 gene (ND2). It is diagnosable from other species in clade 6 by statistically significant mean differences in normalized morphometric, meristic, and categorical characters. A multiple factor analysis using the three aforementioned character types recovered its unique, non-overlapping placement in morphospace as statistically significantly different from that of all other species in clade 6. The description of this new Hemiphyllodactylus species contributes to a growing body of literature underscoring the high degree of herpetological diversity and endemism in karst landscapes in Vietnam as well as in the genus Hemiphyllodactylus .