y'i^. o& Z3 Vol. 81, pp. 123-142 AprU 30, 1968 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON GEOGRAPHIC VARIATION IN THE NEW WORLD GECKKONID LIZARD TARENTOLA AMERICANA GRAY By Albert Schwartz Dept. of Biology, Miami-Dade Junior College, Miami, Florida 33167 Tarentola americana Gray is the sole New World member of the otherwise Old World genus Tarentola. Although the first name proposed for the New World species is T. (as Platydactylus) americana Gray (1831), this name was based upon a specimen supposedly taken in New York, and ameri-cana was long considered a distinct species which had not been subsequently collected. Later, Dumeril and Bibron ( 1836 ) redescribed ( using the same specimen as the holotype ) T. americana, naming the species Platydactylus milbertii. Fin-ally, Gundlach and Peters (1835) described Platydactylus americanus var. cuhanus from Cuba. The Antillean Tarentola was consistently called T. cuhana (Barbour, 1914; Barbour, 1916; Barbour and Ramsden, 1919; Alayo, 1951), but Love-ridge (1944) relegated this name to the synonymy of T. americana, since he considered that all three names {ameri-cana, milberti, cuhana) referred to the same species. Later authors (Alayo, 1955; Schwartz and Ogren, 1956; Ruibal, 1957; Buide, 1966, 1967) have consistently used T. americana for these geckos. T. americana was long considered a rare (or local) inhab-itant of Cuba. Barbour (1914: 259) commented that the species was seldom found; at that time the Museum of Com-parative Zoology at Harvard University had material only from Santiago de Cuba, and Barbour had seen a single speci-men from Cienfuegos. Barbour also reported that Gundlach had found only two specimens in his entire life in Cuba, one 16— Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 81, 1968 (123)
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