24. Hemidactylus kimbulae

Amarasinghe, Karunarathna, Campbell, Madawala & de Silva, 2021

Publication :

Amarasinghe AAT, S Karunarathna, PD Campbell, M Madawala & A de Silva (2021). A New species of Hemidactylus Goldfuss, 1820 (Reptilia: Gekkonidae) from Sri Lanka with redescription of H. hunae Deraniyagala, 1937. Herpetologica 77 (3): 259–272.

Remarks :

We discovered Hemidactylus kimbulae from the southern face peneplain foothills of the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka. This species is allied to H. hunae living on the same island, but it occurs in eastern dry lowlands. Hemidactylus kimbulae is the twelvth Hemidactylus species reported from Sri Lanka and is endemic to that Island.

Etymology:
The specific epithet is an invariable noun in apposition and refers to kimbulae (=crocodile) in Sinhalese language, which it is locally and widely known as kimbulhunae (=crocodile-gecko) due to its large body size.

English name: Crocodile Rock-gecko
Sinhala (local) name: කිඹුල් ගල්-හූනා