Hemidactylus flaviviridis Rüppell, 1835

LECTOTYPE. SMF 8772, designated by Mertens (1967).

TYPE LOCALITY. Insel Masaua, Abyssinien [= Massawa Island, Eritrea].

DISTRIBUTION. Coastal Red Sea from Egypt to Yemen and Somalia, around the shores of the Arabian Peninsula, Persian Gulf coast, Pakistan, E Afghanistan, N India.

DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 44. Mostly along the Persian Gulf coast; a more inland record recently reported from Fars Prov. (Gholamifard et al. 2010).

HABITAT. A typical house gecko bound to human settlements, ports, railway junctions etc. (Gallagher 1971; Khan 2009; Das et al. 2011; pers. obs).

REMARKS. Given the high affinity of H. flaviviridis to urban areas and human settlements it is likely that this gecko has been introduced to the western parts of its range probably from India by humans (Anderson 1999). This assumption is in agreement with the coastal distribution and low genetic variability among animals from Ethiopia, Yemen, Oman, Pakistan, and India (Šmíd et al. 2013a).

REFERENCES. Gallagher (1971); Anderson (1999); Gholamifard et al. (2010); Das et al. (2011); Gholamifard & Rastegar-Pouyani (2011).