Cape Verde wall gecko, also Santo Antão wall gecko, (''Tarentola caboverdiana'') is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

gecko Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution, found on every continent except Antarctica. Belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, geckos are found in warm climates. They range from . Geckos are unique among lizards ...

s in the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Phyllodactylidae The Phyllodactylidae are a family of geckos (Gekkota) consisting of 163 species in 10 genera, distributed throughout the New World, North Africa, Europe and the Middle East. The family was first delineated based on a molecular phylogenetic analys ...

. The species is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

Cape Verde Cape Verde or Cabo Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country and archipelagic state of West Africa in the central Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about . These islands ...

, where it occurs in the island of Santo Antão. The species was named by Hans Hermann Schleich in 1984. The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

''caboverdiana'' refers to Cape Verde, the type locality. This species activity pattern is strictly nocturnal in their habitat.

Taxonomy

The former subspecies '' Tarentola caboverdiana substituta'', '' Tarentola caboverdiana nicolauensis'' and '' Tarentola caboverdiana raziana'' have been elevated to separate species status by Vasconcelos, Perera, Geniez, Harris & Carranza in 2012.Vasconcelos, Perera, Geniez, Harris & Carranza,
An integrative taxonomic revision of the Tarentola geckos (Squamata, Phyllodactylidae) of the Cape Verde Islands.
' Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2012, vol. 164, no. 2, p. 328-360

Taxonomy

References

Further reading