Borneo Dispatches #83: Peter's Forest Gecko

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Hans Breuer (twoton)
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Borneo Dispatches #83: Peter's Forest Gecko

Post by Hans Breuer (twoton) »

Leave it to the Germans to make a supposedly common name even less pronounceable than the already tricky Latin: "Gebänderter Bogenfingergecko" (Cyrtodactylus consobrinus). I'm sure the poor bugger has no idea how many generations of biology students have literally cursed his name.
This foot-long individual was a master class in stealth behavior: for a good half hour, it just sat there fully inert, like a marble gargoyle, observing me keenly as I Charlie Chaplined around with my malfunctioning gear (flash battery dead, soft box wouldn't open, everything covered in sweat, curses ringing through the night), moving not a muscle even when I almost touched him with the lens. Thank you, Mr. Zen. You sure made my night.
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PS: In the past weeks, I've been rediscovering the life form that originally brought me to Borneo - carnivorous tropical pitcher plants, genus Nepenthes. For those who like their veggies armed and violent, here's a selection of some truly spectacular specimens we've found around Kuching this year:
http://pitcherplants.proboards.com/thre ... -desert-oh
http://pitcherplants.proboards.com/thre ... us-nepnerd
http://pitcherplants.proboards.com/thre ... rs-sarawak
http://pitcherplants.proboards.com/thre ... st-sarawak
http://pitcherplants.proboards.com/thre ... rs-sarawak
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Antonsrkn
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Re: Borneo Dispatches #83: Peter's Forest Gecko

Post by Antonsrkn »

Very cool, not at all like my experiences with this species though the times I encountered them they would dart away and run up the trunk they were sitting on or dart into a crack nearly as soon as my headlamp illuminated them.

Amazing pitcher plants as well, botany isn't my thing so much but Nepenthes are insanely cool!
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Hans Breuer (twoton)
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Re: Borneo Dispatches #83: Peter's Forest Gecko

Post by Hans Breuer (twoton) »

Thanks! Yes, I was lucky, I guess ...
dendrelaphis
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Re: Borneo Dispatches #83: Peter's Forest Gecko

Post by dendrelaphis »

Very nice, I wonder whether this might be C. malayanus?
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Hans Breuer (twoton)
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Re: Borneo Dispatches #83: Peter's Forest Gecko

Post by Hans Breuer (twoton) »

dendrelaphis wrote:Very nice, I wonder whether this might be C. malayanus?
Good question. How to tell them apart? I'm not a gecko specialist, really ... only recently realized that there's more to them than just snake food :-)
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Re: Borneo Dispatches #83: Peter's Forest Gecko

Post by dendrelaphis »

I don't remember other than that the morphological differences are small..... But the colouration made me wonder.
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Re: Borneo Dispatches #83: Peter's Forest Gecko

Post by Hans Breuer (twoton) »

We checked a bunch of field guides, and this is consobrinus indeed. But I'd never even heard of malayanus before - thanks for bringing that to my attention!
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