Cyrtodactylus peguensis, (BOULENGER, 1893)

Grismer, L. Lee, Wood, Perry L., Jr., Thura, Myint Kyaw, Zin, Thaw, Quah, Evan S. H., Murdoch, Matthew L., Grismer, Marta S., Lin, Aung, Kyaw, Htet & Lwin, Ngwe, 2018, Twelve new species of Cyrtodactylus Gray (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from isolated limestone habitats in east-central and southern Myanmar demonstrate high localized diversity and unprecedented microendemism, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 182, pp. 862-959 : 952

CYRTODACTYLUS PEGUENSIS ( BOULENGER, 1893)

Type locality: “ Palon”, Bago Region, Myanmar. Syntypes: BM 1946.8 .23.10 and 1893.10.9.2 .

Remarks: A disjunct, southern population of Cyrtodactylus peguensis has long been known to occur from various localities in Peninsular Thailand from immediately south of the Isthmus of Kra southward to central Trang Province ( Laidlaw, 1901; Annandale, 1913; Smith, 1935; Taylor, 1963; Chan-ard, Parr & Nabhitabhata, 2015) and the specimens of C. peguensis in Wood et al. (2012), Agarwal et al. (2014) and here come from these southern regions. As first noted by Smith (1935), however, the southern populations differ markedly in squamation and colour pattern from the holotype from Palon, Pegu, Myanmar minimally 1000 km to the north-west and he questioned the validity of considering these disjunct populations as conspecific. We share Smith’s (1935) concern but until genetic data from the type locality of C. peguensis are available (which we just collected in May 2017), we consider the southern populations as Cyrtodactylus cf. peguensis zebraicus Taylor.

Based on the similarity of colour pattern and squamation of one of the syntypes of C. peguensis (see BM 1946.8.23.10; Fig. 13) we examined and compared to C. pyinyaungensis sp. nov, we hypothesize that C. peguensis from the type locality will be part of the Indo-Burmese clade and closely related to C. pyinyaungensis sp. nov., C. annandalei and the Popa Mountain population and not related to C. cf. p. zebraicus from Peninsular Thailand of the Indo-Chinese clade. Given the phylogenetic relationships and distribution of the former three species and the microendemism common in karst-adapted species, it is unlikely that the Popa Mountain population is not conspecific with C. peguensis from the type locality 300 km to the south from the Bago Yoma Range. We also hypothesize that C. cf. p. zebraicus of the Indo-Chinese clade is not conspecific with the widely allopatric C. peguensis .