Anyone who has worked in wildlife management around the brigalow belt for long enough will know how different the golden-tailed geckos (Strophurus taenicauda) they find can look – thus it will come as no surprise that in 2012 they were split into 3 subspecies.
This spilt was done on the basis of scalation, genetic differences and colour patterns.
I attach the scientific paper here which shows excellent examples of the morphological differences of the various subspecies, discusses the differing vegetation communities they inhabit and outlines their distributions.
For me reading this was a bit of an ‘aha’ moment as I, along with many workmates, had often commented on the morphological differences of these geckos from different areas and in different forest / woodland types!
Also, the associated pic is mine, see if you can guess the subspecies 🙂
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