[geckomaster]

Yeah, these guys are pretty cool, but chances are we won't see catbaensis, huiliensis, or bawanglingensis (forgive spelling errors) in the trade. I believe the bawas are found in a protected national park and there has been virtually no exportation of any mainland gonis for some time. It seems they were hard hit between over-collection for the trade, cultural reasons, and other human effects. Hopefully none go extinct, but I think China and Vietnam will have to go the Japanese route and give them protected status here soon. I'm worried the same thing will happen with the cyrtodactylus species we're seeing a lot of from Malaysia and other locations as well. The ultimate shame is out of all these species exported for the pet trade there is so little to show for it.

[snave_relyt]

Originally Posted by marx

Hello friends

This Goniurosaurus is not new, he was discovered already in the year 2008 and was described also 2008. He doesn't come from Mekong delta either, he comes from the island Cat Ba,this lies in Gulf of Torkin.
You can look more pictures this Goniurosaurus at my internet side.
Nevertheless thank you!

Best wishes,

Markus

goniurosaurus orientalis toyamai yamashinae kuroiwae splendens hainanensis lichtenfelderi luii araneus catbanensis bawalingensis huuliensis

Markus, it is easy to see why it was said "Mekong Delta," because Natl. Geo did say that, but it did say 2008 for the year. Daily Nature and Science News and Headlines | National Geographic News This is their front news page and New Species: Fanged Frog, More Found in Mekong is the link for the video of it, in the video they expand the area to "within the greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia". http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/photogalleries/new-species-fanged-frog-mekong-pictures/photo2.html And this is the photo news version. Give the guy a break.
And if you care to notice it is called the Cat Ba Leopard Gecko.

[marx]

Dear friends

I can understand your words, look at a map. The island of Cat Ba is over the delta of the red river. The Mekong delta lies far in the south of Vietnam.
The connection between the Gecko and the other species is, many projects in Vietnam run over the WWF. It is reported broadly about these scientific projects.
I know one of the discoverers personally Dr. Thomas Ziegler, he works in the zoo in Cologne. I got all pictures from him and also the scientific document.

Here, it is a part of the scientific document; all other questions should answer this!

The eublepharid genus Goniurosaurus, as it is currently constituted, contains ten species, which collectively range throughout northern Vietnam, southern China, islands in the Gulf of Tonkin in the northern portion of the South China Sea, and the Ryukyu Archipelago of Japan (Grismer et al. 2002). According to these authors, Goniurosaurus comprises the G. lichtenfelderi group, the G. kuroiwae group, as well as the G. luii group, which is the sister group to the disjunct monophyletic lineages of the G. lichtenfelderi and G. kuroiwae groups. The G. lichtenfelderi group contains G. lichtenfelderi (Mocquard) from islands in the northern most part of the Gulf of Tonkin and adjacent mainland north-eastern Vietnam, and G. hainanensis Barbour from Hainan Island, China; the G. kuroiwae group from the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan, is composed according to Grismer et al. (2002) of five species: G. kuroiwae Namiye, G. yamashinae (Okada), G. splendens (Nakamaura & Ueno), G. orientalis (Maki) and G. toyamai Grismer, Ota & Tanaka; finally, the G. luii group contains G. araneus Grismer, Viets & Boyle from the northern portion of Vietnam, G. luii Grismer, Viets & Boyle from north ern Vietnam and southeastern mainland of China, and G. bawanglingensis Grismer, Haitao, Orlov & Anajeva from Hainan Island, China (Grismer et al. 1994, 1999, Seufer et al. 2005, Vu et al. 2006).
In addition, Grismer (2000) demonstrated that G. murphyi Orlov & Darevsky (see also Nguyen et al.
2005) is a junior synonym of G. lichtenfelderi, and Seufer et al. (2005) clarified, that the variant records of G.luii from Hainan Island (Grismer et al. 1999: 386) were based on erroneous locality data and that the respective specimens possibly were interbred G. araneus and G. luii instead.
During recent field research in May 2007 on Cat Ba Island, Hai Phong City, northern Vietnam, remarkable Goniurosaurus representatives were collected in the surroundings of limestone forest caves, near karst cliffs and in primary shrub vegetation on limestone. Several herpetological short-term surveys have been carried out on Cat Ba Island, which is located close to the Vietnam-China border in the Gulf of Tonkin (Darevsky 1990, 1999, Nguyen & Shim 1997, Pham et al. 1998, Furey et al. 2002), but only Darevsky (1999) recorded a Goniurosaurus representative. Darevsky (1999) allocated the Goniurosaurus from Cat Ba to the species G. lichtenfelderi, but with a question mark. Also Bobrov (1993) mentioned in his zoogeographical analysis the occurrence of G. lichtenfelderi on some islands off northeastern Vietnam. However, the Goniurosaurus found by us on Cat Ba were distinctly different from G. lichtenfelderi but instead resembled G. luii, which was recently recorded from Vietnam for the first time (Vu et al. 2006). However, explicit comparisons with continental G. luii revealed distinct genetic differences in addition to distinct and continuous differences especially in the scalation. These led us to the conclusion, that a new species was discovered, which is described in the following.

G. catbaensis is an individual species! The difference to the other representatives of the Luii-group is too big.

Best wishes,

Markus

[snave_relyt]

I know it isnt aluii, they just call it a Cat Ba Leopard Gecko, and I was showing why it was said the way it was and how the mix up began, I merely said it was the Mekong Region, that includes a huge area. I do not disagree with you on the area he was found just wanted to post that so you could see how mistakes were made when people read only the summary and dont read the story

[zohariels]

Is this the same as the Hainan leopard gecko? I'm not sure what the scientific name is.

[marx]

The Goniurosaurus from the Luii-Gruppe of the island Hainan is Goniurosaurus bawanglingensis and Goniurosaurus luii.

Markus

www.ms-goniurosaurus.de