Hemiphyllodactylus titiwangsaensis

Cobos, Anthony, Grismer, L. Lee, Wood, Perry L., Quah, Evan S. H., Anuar, Shahrul & Muin, Mohd Abdul, 2016, Phylogenetic relationships of geckos of the Hemiphyllodactylus harterti group, a new species from Penang Island, Peninsular Malaysia, and a likely case of true cryptic speciation, Zootaxa 4107 (3), pp. 367-380 : 378

Taxonomy of Hemiphyllodactylus titiwangsaensis

Hemiphyllodactylus titiwangsaensis was described by Zug (2010) based on a series of specimens from Gunung Brinchang in Cameron Highlands. Zug (2010) reported that members of this species could be found farther along the Banjaran Titiwangsa at Fraser’s Hill 90 km to the south and Grismer (2011) reports an occurrence of this species even farther south at Genting Highlands, Pahang. Zug’s (2010) description was based on morphological characters wherein he noted, that among the adults of the Cameron Highlands population, there was a broad range of variation in morphology (see Appendix; Zug, [2010]) but that the major diagnostic characters of H. titiwangsaensis were a non-pigmented caecum and gonadal ducts, a continuous precloacal-femoral pore series in males of 17–39 pore-bearing scales, an enlarged mental scale bordering chin scales, enlarged first infralabial scales, a digital lamellar formulae for the hand of normally 3–4–4–4, and for the foot of 4–4–5–5 or 4–5–5–5. Additionally, he noted the dorsal color pattern consisted of dark transverse bands. A series of 35 specimens of H. titiwangsaensis were re-examined here from all three localities (see Appendix Grismer et al., 2013). All measurements were retaken and additional morphological characters were added ( Table 5 ). An ANOVA found no significant differences among any scale counts (P = 0.975; F = 0.0249; F crit = 3.219; Table 6 ), indicating there are no significant differences in these characters among the northern and southern populations. Additionally, we could find no consistent differences in color pattern between these populations. At this point in time, we consider H. titiwangsaensis to be a species complex in which the northern population from Cameron Highlands is morphologically similar to those from the southern two populations (Genting Highlands and Fraser’s Hill), yet genetically very distinct (12.4 and 12.8%, respectively). Thus, we recognize the southern populations as H. cf. titiwangsaensis until additional morphological data separating them from H. titiwangsaensis sensu stricto can be obtained.