Endangered
Jewelled gecko
Naultinus gemmeus
Jewelled gecko is a lizard or snake in the family Diplodactylidae — Naultinus gemmeus, recorded as Endangered and tied to New Zealand.
Appearance
Jewelled gecko has a bright to olive green body with either stripes or a pattern of diamonds on its back, a pattern that has given the species its common name, and is an important identifying feature. Colours often seen in the stripes or diamond shapes are white, pale green, or yellow. The underbelly is usually a pale greenish yellow or grey and can sometimes have stripes or streaks too.
The jewelled gecko can get to a total length of 18 cm (7.1 in) with the body usually measuring about 6 to 8 cm (2.4 to 3.1 in) from snout tip to anus (snout-to-vent length, abbreviated SVL). It can also weigh up to 15 grams (.53 oz) and has a very long life span lasting at least 40 years.
Range and habitat
The jewelled gecko is native to the South Island of New Zealand. It is found only on the southeast of the South Island. More precisely the main population is found in Canterbury and Otago.
This gecko is endemic to the South Island of New Zealand.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
Subgroups or populations of the jewelled gecko living in Otago, Canterbury, and Southland can be distinguished by their colour and marking. Otago jewelled gecko populations are often green with yellow and white markings, and Southland jewelled geckos are usually solid green. In 2012 the Department of Conservation reclassified the jewelled gecko as "At Risk" under the New Zealand Threat Classification System.
It was judged as meeting the criteria for "At Risk" threat status as a result of it having a low to high ongoing or predicted decline. The jewelled gecko has a status of "Endangered" on the IUCN Red List, caused by several threats such as habitat destruction, degrading and fragmenting through grazing, herbicides and burning, as well as introduced predators.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Jewelled gecko is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Jewelled gecko, Wikidata item Q3017976. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
