Army’s bent-toed gecko

In News 

• A team of herpetologists have recorded a new species of bent-toed gecko from a wooded part of the Umroi Military Station in Meghalaya.

About Army’s bent-toed gecko

• Its scientific name is Crytodactylus exercitus and its English name is the Indian Army’s bent-toed gecko. Exercitus in Latin means army.
• The name was given to honour the Army for its services to the country.
  • The military station where the bent-toed gecko was discovered was also a factor behind its name.
• Genus Cyrtodactylus: It is represented by about 320 species worldwide and is the third most speciose vertebrate genus in the world. 
  • The members of the genus range from South Asia to Melanesia with high diversity in south Asia. India is now home to 40 species of bent-toed gecko with the northeast accounting for 16 of them.

Image Courtesy: TH

• Other species of the lizard: 
  • Two more species of the lizard new to science have been named after the places of their occurrence in Mizoram
    • The paper recorded another new bent-toed gecko, the Cyrtodactylus siahaensis named after Mizoram’s Siaha district where it was found. 
    • Most of these lizard specialists and a few others had in a separate study recorded the Cyrtodactylus lungleiensis, a new species of bent-toed gecko named after Mizoram’s Lunglei town.

Source: TH