Cyrtodactylus yakhuna

Cyrtodactylus yakhuna, also known as the northern Sri Lanka gecko,[1] spotted bow-fingered gecko, blotch bow-fingered gecko, or demon gecko,[2] is a species of gecko endemic to northern Sri Lanka.[1]

Cyrtodactylus yakhuna
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Family: Gekkonidae
Genus: Cyrtodactylus
Species:
C. yakhuna
Binomial name
Cyrtodactylus yakhuna
(Deraniyagala, 1945)
Synonyms
  • Gymnodactylus yakhuna Deraniyagala, 1945
  • Geckoella yakhuna (Deraniyagala, 1945)

Habitat and distribution

It is a dainty, ground-dwelling gecko from the dry plains of the north, below 300m of Sri Lanka. Known areas of occurrence lies in the North East and North Central Provinces (ssp. yakhuna) and North West Provinces (ssp. zonatus), in localities such as Mannar, Puttalam, Puliyankulam, Polonnaruwa, Giritale, Sigiriya, and Menikdena.

Description

Its body is stout, cylindrical, and covered with small, granular scales. Scales on the venter overlap. The tail is heavy, tapering, and regenerated tail is turnip-shaped. Supralabials 9-10. Infra-labials 7-9. Subcaudal scales are not distinctly enlarged. The dorsum has two cross rows of dark blotches. In subspecies G. y. yakhuna, the blotches consist of two sub-rectangular marks, with intervening light areas with numerous black spots. In subspecies G. y. zonatus, the blotches are two dark brown transverse rows of large cross bands, which are equal to or shorter than the light interspaces. The tail has dark bands.

Ecology and diet

It inhabits deciduous and scrub forests. It is crepuscular, hiding under rotting timber and leaves during the day and emerging at dusk to forage on small arthropods, such as termites.

Reproduction

Four eggs are laid at a time, in the month of January. Incubation period is 95 days.

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gollark: (this isn't about a single actual physical molecule or something changing, but the genes for it changing slightly over time and producing different verisons)
gollark: I guess so. If you need, say, ten changes to an enzyme to bring it from one state to a much better one, but it works much worse/totally breaks while it's in the middle of both, it's hard for it to evolve to the better version.
gollark: If one what is stuck?
gollark: I was going to say, though: with human eyes - the light-sensitive bit is behind some other stuff, and while a goal-directed human engineer would probably go "I'll just rotate this thing then", if you don't have a convenient series of changes which still leave everything working in each intermediate state, you can't really get it evolving into the new version.

References
  1. Cyrtodactylus yakhuna at the Reptarium.cz Reptile Database. Accessed 12 April 2018.
  2. "Spotted Bowfinger Gecko". Sri Lanka Reptile.Com. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
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