> Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 00:20:30 -0500
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Does anyone know where a person could find the "official" description of
> this animal, or any other beasty for that matter?
It seems that there are both S.petrii and S.sthenodactylus around. They
are not easy to tell apart. The latter species ranges over the entire
Sahara desert and adjacent areas as far south as Kenya and east into
southern Israel. This is an area larger than the USA, so there may be
a lot of geographic variation too.
THere's an article about the geckos of Israel at
http://herpetology.com/1phs31.html
which describes both these Stenodactylus spp briefly. It has a photo
of a male S.sthenodactylus. In Israel, S.petrii is found only in a
sand dune environment, while S.sthenodactylus is more adaptable and
found over a wider and more varied terrain and climatic range.
One theory on how to distinguish these very similar and closely related
species is that the tails are different. S.petrii has a prominent
constriction at the base of the tail and then a long "whip" tail, while
S. sthenodactylus has a more gradual taper and a stockier tail. By
this criterion, your stenos are S.sthenodactylus. One of the pictures
on the GGA web site, http://www.gekkota.com/html/gga_photo_pages_228.html,
shows a petrii-type tail. I think the following two pictures (229 and 230)
show a sthenodactylus-type tail. I have some alleged S.sthenodactylus, and
they have short tapering mottled tails with black and light rings at the
ends. They sometimes twitch these prominently marked tail ends before
lunging at prey.
I don't know if this tail shape criterion is respected by real taxonomists,
however.
The last time this came up on the list, Tony Gamble (who, unlike me, actually
knows gecko taxonomy) posted:
>> The essential paper for understanding Stenodactylus taxonomy is Edwin
>> Arnold's "A review of the lizard genus Stenodactylus
>> (Reptilia:Gekkonidae)" in "Fauna of Saudi Arabia, Volume 2". This paper
>> has excellent descriptions, a key to the species, and, in most cases,
>> color photos of all the Stenodactylus forms. The "Fauna of Saudi
>> Arabia" series should be available in most large University libraries
>> (I rarely see them for sale and when they are offered they are stupidly
>> expensive so thats your best bet). There is, by the way, not much
>> confusion over the genus taxonomically, but there are a lot of little
>> brown geckos that are imported from the middle east and sold as
>> "Stenodactylus". This is where most of the confusion in the pet trade
>> comes from. Its also likely that there are some new species and /or new
>> varieties that have yet to be described formally that can make keying
>> animals out difficult and frustrating. Locality data would make things
>> much easier but it is, unfortunately hard to come by.
I looked this up, and unfortunately it didn't seem to have any criteria
that were easy to apply to live geckos. For example, the distinction
between S.petrii and S.sthenodactylus was whether they had one or three
rows of scales on the underside of the toes. Because there are another
9 species mostly endemic to Saudi Arabia, the key is not as useful as it
might be for distinguishing these two species, if as Tony implies, there
really are only two species involved.
Whichever species you have, I think you will enjoy them. I really like
mine. These little guys love to dig, and if you give them a few inches
of sand of suitable texture they will honeycomb it with tunnels, back
doors, sleeping chambers, etc - a real ant farm act. They don't seem to
mind running some of these tunnels, etc up against the glass, so you can
watch them underground. During the summer mine slept underground all day,
but in the fall when the room temp dropped, they started basking under the
lamp a lot. The second picture you sent didn't get here, but if it showed
your gecko lying on its chest with its arms along its sides, palms up - mine
do that too. Very cute, indeed!
Another neat thing they do is chirp, a string of 5 to 7 evenly spaced little
sparrow chirps, with their pudgy little sides heaving. Both sexes do this.
You can set them off by tapping something in the same rhythm - mine reply
when I tap the bottom of my fruit fly bottles to get the flies out for the
frogs.
If you are a fan of GWNALTTA (Geckos Whose Names Are Longer Than They Are)
Stenodactylus sthenodactylus is a big winner. Btw, the name means 'narrow
toes, strong toes', and they can sure move the sand with those tiny digits!
At any rate, I hope this helps, and nobody stomps on me for implying that
their stenos may not be the species they know they are!
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