Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i was taking a look at the uroplatus book again, and as i was looking for stuff on ebenaui and phantasticus, long-tailed ebenaui came to mind. i remember reading somewhere that some people doubted that long-tailed ebenaui were a hybrid of ebenaui and phantasticus because their ranges were not believed to overlap. i was looking at the distribution maps in the book, and if you look just south of Antsiranana (northern tip), both ebenaui and phantasticus have overlapping or otherwise very closely related ranges. i wonder if maybe thats where the "long-tailed" ebenaui are coming from.

According to bill love ebanaui like uroplatus can be found all over the island. I'm going to give him some credit on this because he travels there several times a year.

jason

I don't believe them to be hybrids, I believe them to be another species. I think that there are alot more species of Uroplatus on Madagascar, but we'll never know now with all this stuff going on with them. The long tailed eben's are also a bit larger than the typical ebenaui. I think they are a subspecies, something. It's just like the U.s.sikorae and the U.s.sameiti, are these the same gecko? Or is the mouth color just another trait like the clouded form??? this stuff is all really hard to distinguish, but hopefully we will learn more of this stuff in the future.
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Leland
"Captive Bred Geckos from Around the World"
www.dwgeckos.com

There are people trying to work these things out and more will be known in the future... There are not a lot more species of Uroplatus in Madagascar, but there are likely many that could be classified as subspecies... Genetic work is being done as we speak...

If you are scientifically minded, right now, phantasticus isn't even a valid species... It was last addressed by Bauer and Russell in 1989 and placed in synonymy with ebenaui… There are several intermediate conditions that occur between the two but they admittedly recognized that more work needs to be done to distinguish its clear placement… Differences in hemipenis structure might be an important tool… No-one has looked at this yet… However, as I have said, the new age of systematics is in genetics and there will likely be breakthroughs in this area as far Uroplatus are concerned in the near future…
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Ben

U. sikorae and U.s.sameiti can interbreed and produce viable offspring.

Jason

thats interesting....ive noticed people say that they have one of each subspecies and tried to breed them, yet thought they never showed any interest in one another. well, i guess ive thought the same about a lot of my other uro's, yet they prove me wrong each time by producing eggs, sometimes hiding them TOO well. i was watching my pair eat last night, and it seems as though my male has a black mouth (sikorae), and my female has a flesh-colored buccal cavity (sameiti). i havent determined it for sure though, just tried to get the best view possible as they licked the last bits of crickets off their mouths. they're very differently patterned, but all of the labeled sameiti ive seen always tended to have bright yellow eyes. maybe i was mistaken on that...