Two newly recognized species of Hemidactylus (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from the Arabian Peninsula and Sinai, Egypt

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 (CC-BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.A recent molecular phylogeny of the Arid clade of the genus Hemidactylus revealed that the recently described H. saba and two unnamed Hemidactylus species from Sinai, Saudi Arabia and Yemen form a well-supported monophyletic group within the Arabian radiation of the genus. The name 'Hemidactylus saba species group' is suggested for this clade. According to the results of morphological comparisons and the molecular analyses using two mitochondrial (12S and cytb) and four nuclear (cmos, mc1r, rag1, rag2) genes, the name Hemidactylus granosus Heyden, 1827 is resurrected from the synonymy of H. turcicus for the Sinai and Saudi Arabian species. The third species of this group from Yemen is described formally as a new species H. ulii sp. n. The phylogenetic relationships of the members of 'Hemidactylus saba species group' are evaluated and the distribution and ecology of individual species are discussed. © Jiří Šmíd et al.The study was supported by the NAKI project of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic (# DF12P01OVV021 MKČR to JŠ and JM), by grant CGL2012-36970 to SC from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Spain (co-funded by FEDER). We are thankful to the Deanship of academic research at Taif University for funding the sample collection in Saudi Arabia (Grant no. 1-433-2108) and to Omer Baeshen, Environment Protection Agency, Sana'a, Republic of Yemen for issuing the collecting permit (Ref 10/2007).Peer Reviewe