Hemidactylus, Goldfuss, 1820

Šmíd, Jiří, Uvizl, Marek, Shobrak, Mohammed, Busais, Salem, Salim, Al Faqih Ali, AlGethami, Raed Hamoud M., AlGethami, Abdulaziz Raqi, Alanazi, Abdulkarim Saleh K., Alsubaie, Saad Dasman, Rovatsos, Michail, Nováková, Lucie, Mazuch, Tomáš & Carranza, Salvador, 2023, Diversification of Hemidactylus geckos (Squamata: Gekkonidae) in coastal plains and islands of southwestern Arabia with descriptions and complete mitochondrial genomes of two endemic species to Saudi Arabia, Organisms Diversity & Evolution (New York, N. Y.) 23 (1), pp. 185-207 : 203

Hemidactylus mitogenomes

This is the first study on Hemidactylus geckos for which we not only generated traditional phylogenetic markers using Sanger sequencing but also employed Illumina sequencing to obtain complete mitochondrial genomes of four species, two of which were newly described in this study. It is pivotal to note that all four specimens for which the mitogenomes were sequenced are holotypes, the name-bearing specimens of the species, which has crucial implications for future taxonomic and phylogenetic studies as these sequences will always be tied with the names of the species. We were inspired by the recent paper of Köhler et al. (2021), who published a draft genome and complete mitogenome of a holotype of a new homalopsid snake. For the time being, the mitogenomic sequences of the four Hemidactylus species published here serve to characterize the genomic composition and architecture of the mitochondrial genomes of the four holotypes. However, once complete genomes or mitogenomes become available for more Hemidactylus species (work in progress), they will provide a powerful tool to reconstruct the evolutionary and diversification history of this highly diverse gecko genus with confidence and trace the genomic signatures of its highly successful radiation.