A New Gecko with Javier Lobon-Rovira

New Species

When researchers talk about species disappearing before we can discover them, they’re talking about species like Javier Lobon-Rovira’s new gecko. With a specific and rapidly fragmenting habitat, this species of Paroedura might have left the world as an unknown cryptic species.

“My goal in my life,” Javier tells us, “is not to describe new species… but when you describe new species and you put it on an evolutionary frame, you can provide the grounds to better understand how the species distributed in the space and in the time, and which factors that are involved have some implication in the diversification pattern of the species that is completely needed to keep the natural selection or the continued evolution of the species to survive.”

Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on episode length - this episode ended up being short and sweet, but in the future we will have longer episodes, closer to 45 minutes.

Javier Lobon-Rovira’s paper “Another step through the crux: a new microendemic rock-dwelling Paroedura (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from south-central Madagascar” is in volume 1181 of Zookeys.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1181.108134

New Species: Paroedura manongavato

Episode image courtesy of Javier Lobon-Rovira

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Javier Lobon-Rovira - Transcript

Check out Javier’s amazing photography: www.javierlobonrovira.com

Follow Javier on Instagram: @javilbn_wildphotography

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)