Mediterranean Gecko: Big-Headed, Four-Legged, Gray-Pink-Tan-White Body

Summary: North American Mediterranean gecko habitats get gray-pink-tan-white bodies with big heads, lidless vertical pupils, four legs, pale bumps and ringtails.

Mediterranean house gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus); Dallas, northeastern Texas; Saturday, May 23, 2009, 19:03:48: Nathan Vaughn (Brilhasti1), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

North American Mediterranean gecko habitats adopt distribution ranges from Virginia through Arizona, from Utah through California and in Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri since Mediterranean geckos are from Mediterranean Africa, Asia and Europe.

Mediterranean geckos bear their common name for native homelands and for Gekkonidae gekko lizard family membership whose name bespeaks the geh-oh bellows of Asian Tokay geckos. The scientific name Hemidactylus turcicus communicates the first, genus name's half-finger-configured foot pads covering all but toe tips and the second, species name's taxonomic specimen origins. Carl Linnaeus's (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778) descriptions in 1758, Jiří Moravec's in 1997, 2011 and 2013 and Karl F. Buchholz's in 1954 decide scientific designations.

Mediterranean gecko life cycles expect night-lighted building ceiling and walls for edible prey and palm leaves, rocky outcrop cracks and tree bark crevices as escape routes.

March through July fit Mediterranean geckos with related ashy, banded, big bend, Indo-Pacific, leaf-toed, ocellated, reef, Texas banded and yellow-headed skinks variously mating spring through winter.

Mediterranean geckos go out between twilight and dawn to grab crawling, climbing, low- and slow-flying invertebrates gathered around night-lighted buildings and street lamps from daytime hideaways. They hasten to favorite hangouts and homey hideaways where long, loud, territorial disputes among juvenile competitors and mature rivals respectively herald cricket-like chirps and squeaked vocalizations. Defensive and offensive involvements impale thin skin on sharp-clawed, unwebbed toe tips and sharp-toothed strong jaws, implode regrowable tails and initiate hisses through fast-action, long tongues.

Agro-industrialists, breeders, collectors, polluters and predatory crows, foxes, hedgehogs, mice, opossums, owls, raccoons, raptors, rats, shrews, skunks, snakes and weasels jeopardize North American Mediterranean gecko habitats.

Mediterranean geckos keep to angry confrontations among rival males, brief courtships and internal fertilizations of calcium carbonate-shelled eggs that females keep laying from April to August.

Translucent-skinned abdomens let wildlife observers look at 1- to 3-egg clutches, for laying in rock cliffs and tree hollows one month or two after breeding seasons. The 1.58-inch (4-centimeter) hatchlings from 0.47- by 0.39-inch (12- by 10-millimeter) eggs in two to three seasonal clutches manifest round ringtails with keeled tubercles (ridged bumps). Crawling and low-, slow-flying, day-active, ground- to near-ground-level, opportunistic ants, beetles, centipedes, cockroaches, crickets, flies, gnats, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, moths, slugs, snails, spiders and termites nourish adults.

North American Mediterranean gecko habitats offer season-coldest temperature ranges, north to southward, from minus 25 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31.66 to minus 6.66 degrees Celsius).

Acacia bushlands and woodlands, coastal, coniferous, deciduous, dry, mixed, moist, mountain, pine-oak forests, dry and flooded grasslands and dry scrublands, shrublands and woodlands protect Mediterranean geckos.

Physical and sexual maturation queues up 4- to 5.5-inch (10.16- to 13.97-centimeter), 1.58- to 1.97-inch (4- to 5-centimeter), 0.12-ounce (3.5-gram) snout-vent lengths, total lengths and weights. Adults reveal four-legged, grainy-, small-scaled, translucent gray, pink, tan or white bodies with banded, round tails, claw-, wide-tipped, padded toes and upper-sides knobby-rowed with keeled tubercles. Their big, depressed heads showcase somber, staring eyes whose lidlessness and vertical pupils respectively signify sight through a transparent scale, called a spectacle, and night-active lifestyles.

North American Mediterranean gecko habitats take in big-headed, four-legged, grainy-, soft-scaled gray-pink-tan-white bodies with claw-, wide-tipped padded toes, lidless vertical pupils, rounded ringtails and white-ridged bumps.

Mediterranean house gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus), originally an Old World species, now claims New World homelands, including the southeastern United States: Fort Pulaski National Monument @FortPulaskiNPS, via Facebook Sep. 24, 2014

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Mediterranean house gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus); Dallas, northeastern Texas; Saturday, May 23, 2009, 19:03:48: Nathan Vaughn (Brilhasti1), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/46799485@N00/3578508845

Mediterranean house gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus), originally an Old World species, now claims New World homelands, including the southeastern United States: Fort Pulaski National Monument @FortPulaskiNPS, via Facebook Sep. 24, 2014, @ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=835106813190707

For further information:

Buchholz, Karl F. 1954. "Eine Neuer Hemidactylus von den Balearen (Rept. Geckonidae): Hemidactylus turcicus spinalis subsp. nov." Bonner Zoologische Beiträge, vol. 5, nos. 1-2 (July 15, 1954): 68. Bonn, Germany: Zoologisches Forschungsinstitut und Museum Alexander Koenig.
Available via Bonn Zoological Bulletin @ http://zoologicalbulletin.de/BzB_Volumes/Volume_05_1_2/068_068_BZB05_1_2_Buchholz_KarlF.PDF
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/bonnerzoolo5619541955zool#page/n79/mode/1up

Fort Pulaski National Monument @FortPulaskiNPS. 24 September 2014. "#WildWednesday The Mediterranean Gecko, Hemidactylus turcicus, is an introduced species from Southern Europe and Northern Africa." Facebook.
Available @ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=835106813190707

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 7, Reptiles, edited by Michael Hutchins, James B. Murphy, and Neil Schlager. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2003.

Linnaeus, Carl. 1758. "13. Lacerta turcica." Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis, Tomus I, Editio Decima, Reformata: 202. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/727113

"Mediterranean Gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus -- Introduced." University of Georgia Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) Herpetology Program > Lizards.
Available @ http://srelherp.uga.edu/lizards/hemtur.htm

Moravec, Jiři; & Böhme, Wolfgang. 1997. "A New Subspecies of the Mediterranean Gecko, Hemidactylus turcicus from the Syrian Lava Desert (Squamata: Sauria: Gekkonidae): Hemidactylus turcicus lavadeserticus ssp. n." Herpetozoa, vol. 10, nos. 3/4 (Dec. 30, 1997): 121-128. Vienna, Austria: Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Herpetologie [Austrian Society of Herpetology].
Available @ http://www.zobodat.at/pdf/HER_10_3_4_0121-0128.pdf

Moravec, Jiří; Lukáš Kratochvíl; Zuair S. Amr; David Jandzik; Jiří Šmíd; and Václav Gvoždík. 2011. "High Genetic Differentiation Within the Hemidactylus turcicus Complex (Reptilia: Gekkonidae) in the Levant, With Comments on the Phylogeny and Systematics of the Genus." Zootaxa, issue 2894: 21-38.
Available via ResearchGate @ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234004817
Available via Magnolia Press @ http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2011/f/z02894p038f.pdf

Šmíd, Jiří; Moravec, Jiří; Lukáš Kratochvíl; Václav Gvoždík; Abdul Karim Nasher; Salem M. Busais; Thomas Wilms; Mohammed Y. Shobrak; Salvador Carranza. 2013. "Two Newly Recognized Species of Hemidactylus (Squamata, Gekkonidae) From the Arabian Peninsula and Sinai, Egypt." ZooKeys, issue 355 (Nov. 25, 2013): 79-107. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.355.6190.
Available via ZooKeys @ https://zookeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=3570

Uetz, Peter. "Hemidactylus turcicus (Linnaeus, 1758)." The Reptile Database.
Available @ http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Hemidactylus&species=turcicus&search_param=%28%28search%3D%27Hemidactylus+turcicus%27%29%29