A new record of Stenodactylus affinis (Murray 1884) (Sauria: Gekkonidae) from Bandar-e-Abbas, Hormozgan Province, Southern Iran

During field work in southern Iran in March 2011 one adult female (gravid) Stenodactylus affinis was collected in the early morning from a hard-packed salt substrate with sparse vegetation on the road from Bandar-e-Abbas to Minab (N 27º 17 , E 56º 28 ) at an elevation of 8 m below sea level. It was syntopic with Acanthodactylus blanfordi and Bunopus tuberculatus. The genus Stenodactylus (Fitzinger, 1826) is one of the gekkonid taxa that originated from the Afro- Arabian plate. The divergence in Stenodactylus is deep and dates back to several million years ago, probably in the Miocene (Fujita and Papenfuss, 2011). Geological events, such as the formation of the Red Sea during the Miocene, separated populations of Stenodactylus in Africa and Arabia. According to Fujita and Papenfuss (2011) the genus Tropiocolotes nested within Stenodactylus clade on an individual gene tree which make the genus Stenodactylus as paraphyletic genus. Hass (1957) using distinct morphological characters, described this species as the sole member of a new genus, Pseudoceramodactylus khobarensis. Based on their molecular data, Fujita and Papenfuss (2011) therefore resurrected Pseudoceramodactylus. Recently, this taxon has been reported from Qeshm Island, Iran (Dakhteh et al., 2007).