An Adaptive Radiation Under Our Feet? Examining Diversification Patterns in New World Leaf-litter Geckos

I am so happy to see that this cool project is fully funded! It should be a great project! Cannot wait to see the findings!

Good Luck and Good Science

#Gecko4Life

This sounds really awesome, now I really want one of these guys to be in a little terrarium on my desk

Hi Cindy, this is a good question. We think that islands may have fewer resources available for these species and the island species evolve these morphologies to specialize in utilization of these resources. For example, there is a species on the island of Jamaica that lives between the narrow crevices of the leaves of bromeliad plants and it also has an extremely long and narrow snout, it may be adapted to capturing prey in these microhabitats. The results from this project will definitely motivate many more avenues of research to answer these questions!

What are some of your hypotheses? For example, do you have a guess as to why the New World Leaf-litter Geckos would develop larger skulls?