A new species of gecko that “looks like a little dragon”, with a beaky face and spiny leaf-shaped tail, has been discovered on an uninhabited Queensland island.
The lizard was found on Scawfell Island, a rugged island about 50km offshore from the north Queensland city of Mackay.
Assoc Prof Conrad Hoskin, a terrestrial ecologist at James Cook University, came across the lizard during a four-day survey of the island, in “deep bouldery habitat covered in fig trees and ferns”.
“It’s super exciting – it’s every biologist’s dream to find a new species,” he said.
Hoskin has named the animal Phyllurus fimbriatus, the Scawfell Island leaf-tailed gecko, with its scientific name referring to the fringe of spines around the lizard’s tail.
The carnivorous reptile, described in a paper published in the journal Zootaxa, measures about 15cm in length from nose to tail.
“Leaf-tailed geckoes look like mottled rock but they have little white stripes on their tail – this one has a white V-shaped stripe,” Hoskin said.
“It’s really quite smooth for a leaf-tail – they’re usually much more spiky. It’s a got a really distinct … pattern and a nice big beaky face,” he added said. “It looks like a little dragon or something.”
Hoskin spotted about 30 specimens during his survey and estimates that the newly discovered gecko occupies a total area of less than 1 sq km.
“It’s only found in the wettest, rainforesty, rockiest pockets of [Scawfell].”
The coast of the rugged island is lined by granite cliffs, while areas of rainforest cover its steep mountain slopes.
“[The lizard] can’t handle the hot conditions that you’d get in most parts of the island – it needs to have really good shelter from the heat and the dry,” Hoskin said.
He added that the gecko probably shelters under boulders during the day and emerges at night to hunt insects, spiders and smaller geckos.
Hoskins suggests the Scawfell Island leaf-tailed gecko may be one of the last distinct new vertebrates to be found in Australia.
“Australia’s pretty well explored, so it’s exciting when we get an instantly obviously new big creature – like a lizard or a frog or a bird – discovered in this day and age,” he said.
Scawfell Island is protected within South Cumberland Islands national park but potential threats to the species include fire and competition from invasive species.
“I found a few of the [feral] Asian house geckos on the island,” Hoskin said, suggesting they could have been inadvertently introduced to the island via boat by campers. “We know around Townsville they can build up huge numbers in the bush and outcompete native geckos.”
