Critically Endangered
Turquoise dwarf gecko
Lygodactylus williamsi
Turquoise dwarf gecko is a gecko in the family Gekkonidae — Lygodactylus williamsi, recorded as Critically Endangered and tied to Tanzania.
Appearance
Adult snout-vent length (SVL) is 5 to 8 cm (2.0 to 3.1 in). Females range from brown or bronze to bright green, and have little to no black on the throat. Females can easily be confused with juvenile or socially suppressed males that are also green, sometimes with a bluish cast.
Range and habitat
L. Williamsi is only found in 8 km2 (3.1 mi2) of the Kimboza Forest, Ruvu Forest Reserve, Mbagalala and Muhalama at an altitude of 170–480 m (560–1,570 ft). The subpopulation in Kimboza Forest Reserve was estimated at 150,000 adults in 2009. In the wild, the turquoise day gecko lives exclusively on the (redlisted endemic) screwpine, Pandanus rabaiensis, mostly in the leaf crown.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Like all geckos of the genera Lygodactylus and Phelsuma, L. Williamsi is diurnal. Males of L. Williamsi court females with lateral flattening, puffing out of the throat pouch, and head bobbing.
Although L. Williamsi breeds in captivity, the young require a lot of specific care, making large-scale breeding difficult. There is some specialist breeding, with one very large breeder claiming to have produced about a thousand individuals as of 2017, but no large-scale professional breeding. A captive breeding project and studbook was initiated by EAZA-registered zoos in 2013.
In crisis
The survival of L. Williamsi is mostly threatened by (entirely illegal) collection for the international pet trade. It is critically endangered and the population is thought to be declining rapidly. It is estimated that between December 2004 and July 2009, at least 32,310 to 42,610 geckos were taken by one collecting group, ~15% of the wild population at the time.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Turquoise dwarf 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 Lygodactylus williamsi, Wikidata item Q137615. 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.
