Along the African coast lies the world’s only coastal desert: the Namib Sand Sea. The ecological marvel, which spans 7,605,162 acres, encompasses shifting, mountainous dunes bathed in low-hanging fog.
And every evening, a chorus of distinct, plopping sounds ring out from burrows across the landscape.
Recently, the calls led a team of scientists to a new gecko species: the P. sceletus.
“The call strongly resembles the sound of bouncing marbles and, on a warm evening on the interdunes, thousands can be heard calling in chorus,” lead author François S. Becker observed in the study, which was published in Vertebrate Zoology on August 28.
According to researchers, the P. sceletus, or Skeleton Coast barking gecko, is named both due to its location — the Skeleton Coast between the Swakop River and the Kunene River — and its haunting appearance.
“The white or grey dorsal surfaces of the head and feet give the gecko a ghostly or skeletal appearance,” Becker noted, adding that it had “light orange speckles along the spine and dark purple-brown speckles … all over.”
In addition to discovering the Skeleton Coast barking gecko, Becker and his colleagues used DNA testing and mating call comparisons to revisit the taxonomy of the P. g. maculatus, a barking gecko thought to populate the wide expanse of the Namib Desert.
But upon the discovery that the P. g. maculatus was limited just to the central northern Namib Desert, the researchers realized that what was long assumed to be one species was actually four.
“Four new species are named, which were previously included in ‘P. g. maculatus’,” Becker said.
“Southern barking gecko (Ptenopus adamanteus) from the southern Namib Desert, P. circumsyrticus from the central Namib Desert, P. kenkenses from the northern Nama Karoo, and P. australis from southern Nama Karoo.”
In Africa, barking geckos build complex burrows beneath the sandy dunes, which aerates the earth — allowing plants to thrive in drought-heavy conditions — and creating microhabits along the way.
By feasting upon crickets, dubia roaches, and black soldier fly larvae, barking geckos keep pest populations from spiralling out of control.
They also serve as prey for various snakes, mammals, and the White Lady Spider, a huntsman spider native to the Namib Desert.
In total, the researchers discovered five new species of barking gecko, a family of geckos oft-identified as the “most vociferous” of lizards.
In 1849, herpetologist Andrew Smith noted the reptile’s distinctive barking calls in an early species description, which called the noise “so disagreeable, as to cause the traveller to change his quarters.”
“Males [produce] loud advertisement calls at the entrance of their burrows to attract females and maintain territories,” Becker noted.
“These calls can be heard from hundreds of meters [away], and substantial choruses consisting of thousands of calling males have been recorded.”
Watch the video below to hear the African barking gecko’s distinctive call:
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Header image via Dr. Rüdiger Wenzel (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)
