Three new species and one new subspecies of Hemidactylus OKEN, 1817 from Yemen (Squamata, Gekkonidae)

Abstract

Based on morphological and molecular characters, three new species and one subspecies of the genus Hemidactylus are described from the mainland of Yemen. According to the molecular tree of mitochondrial genes of Cytochrome b and 12S (Busais & Joger 2011), Hemidactylus species from the mainland were divided into three monophyletic groups: Three taxa are members of H. yerburii group, two clades are members of H. robustus group and three compose a new group of undescribed species. In addition to the molecular results, the morphological analysis revealed that each new species is distinguished from the other species of the genus in some morphological characters. In this study, a detailed description of each new species is presented.