Réunion Island ornate day gecko

Appearance

The body colour is dark green. Three red stripes extend from the snout to the neck. From behind the eye, a thick brown stripe and a thin green-white extend to above the front leg.

This lizard is one of the smallest day geckos.

It can reach a total length of about 12 cm at most.

Range and habitat

This species is endemic to Réunion. It is found in the coastal areas in the region of Manapany-Les-Bains and St.-Joseph. This coastal ecosystem is among the most threatened on the island, and the gecko's habitat is severely fragmented by urbanization and agriculture.

Reunion Island ornate day gecko or Manapany day gecko is a critically endangered diurnal species of gecko. It occurs only on the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, typically inhabits trees, and feeds on insects and nectar.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Habits

Typical geckos hunt after dark on vertical surfaces. Day geckos in some genera are the exception — bright and diurnal.

In crisis

The species is critically endangered, with a population of 3-5 thousand in 2011. The population is shrinking rapidly: in 1995, it was estimated at 5-10 thousand.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Réunion Island ornate day gecko is Critically 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 Réunion Island ornate day gecko, Wikidata item Q3272059. 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.