Muria gecko (Cnemaspis muria)

Cicak Muria or muria gecko or Mount Muria gecko (Cnemaspis muria) are Cnemaspis species live on Mount Muria, Central Java Province, Indonesia, and are found accidentally along rivers and coffee plantations. The inventors predict C. muria plays a role in controlling insect populations including pests in coffee plants.

Gecko as a reptile that usually creeps on a wall or tree, has a gray or blackish brown color and is about 10 centimeters in size. Tropical climate is a very comfortable place for various types of lizard to grow and develop as recently discovered.

Muria gecko is a special species as the first record for the distribution of stone gecko on the island of Java today and Mount Muria which has a history of being separated from the island. Other Cnemaspis species in Indonesia are known only on Mount Rajabasa in Lampung Province, West Kalimantan Province and a small island in the Karimata Strait.

In July 2018, Andri IS Martamenggala from Gaia Consulting discovered and realized that this gecko was one of the new species. So far Cnemaspis has never been reported in Java and Martamenggala managed to convince these findings to colleagues at LIPI.

LIPI formed a team including Awal Riyanto, Misbahul Munir, Yuli Sulistya Fitriana, Amir Hamidy and Martamanggala to conduct research on these findings. The new species of stone lizard they named Cnemaspis muria on May 17, 2019 in ZOOTAXA, 4608 (1), 155-173, DOI:10.11646/zootaxa.4608.1.9.

Mount Muria gecko has morphological features including round pupils, a total length of 5.8 cm, has a pair of cone-shaped tubercular structures on the back of the head, warty grooves in the nuchal loop, dorsal tubercular series not arranged linearly, without pores precloakal and femoral pores.

The first limb of the front limb has an enlarged submetakarpal structure, on the first finger the hind limb has enlarged submetatarsal scales, 31-35 lamella under the fingers of the four hind limbs, right and left of the cloaca have each of the two tubercular structures.

A row of subkaudal scales enlarges in the middle of the ventral tail and tubercular forms a ring formation along the tail. Males have a yellow belly and the tip of the tail is white, while the female has a white belly and half the tail of the back is decorated in black and white alternating like a ring.

C. muria lives in rock habitats along rivers and coffee plantations, maybe also in forests at an altitude of 600 to 650 m above sea level. Morphological and phylogeny analysis is closely related to C. bidongensis on Bidong Island, Malaysia, and belongs to the Kendallii distributed in peninsular Malaysia, Kalimantan, Natuna and Java as new distribution locations. The genetic distance of the two species is 4.4% to 4.5%.

Journal : Riyanto et al. Hiding in plain sight on Gunung Muria: A new species and first record of rock gecko (Cnemaspis Strauch, 1887; Squamata, Gekkonidae) from Java, Indonesia, Zootaxa, 17 May 2019, DOI:10.11646/zootaxa.4608.1.9

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Family: Gekkonidae
Subfamily: Gekkoninae
Genus: Cnemaspis
Species: V. muria

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