Northern House Gecko

Fascinating facts about the Northern House Gecko

• The yellow-belly gecko extends its range far beyond the African continent, reaching the southern tip of South America where it has been recorded in Argentina. Its distribution also covers a broad swathe of the Middle East, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Further east it inhabits South Asian nations such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and India, as well as the Horn of Africa and the island of Socotra.
• Socotra Island, a remote landmass off the coast of Yemen, is listed among the regions that form part of the species' known distribution.
• The type locality for Hemidactylus flaviviridis is recorded as Massawa Island, which historically lay within the region known as Abyssinia. This specific island designation anchors the original scientific description of the species. By tying the species to a precise historic location, researchers can trace its taxonomic origins back to early 19th-century explorations.
• The yellow-belly gecko was formally introduced to science in 1842 when J. Gray published a description of several new reptiles. Gray's paper appeared in The Zoological Miscellany, providing the first recognised account of the species. This early work established the taxonomic name Hemidactylus flaviviridis that is still used today.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

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