Tarentola pyripeternsis Mateo et al., 2022
Sal wall gecko
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Conservation Status
Extinct (Fernández-Palacios et al., 2025)
Last record: "After 15th century" (Fernández-Palacios et al., 2025); 1934 (unconfirmed) (Angel, 1935, 1937; but see Hernández-Montero et al., 2022)
A single Tarentola was caught in 1934 from Sal and reported by (Angel, 1935, 1937), but this record is disputed (Hernández-Montero et al., 2022). Recent searches of the island of Sal did not find any Tarentola spp. (Vasconcelos et al., 2012, 2013; Hernández-Montero et al., 2022). Tarentola individuals have been reported from Rabo de Junco Islet west of Sal during the nights of 10-11 June 2019, and these require identification "to determine whether it is a species found on other islands, an introduced species, or even a new undescribed species" (Hernández-Montero et al., 2022:17). T. pyripeternsis was subsequently described from Sal based upon subfossil material (Mateo et al., 2022), and this raises the possibility that the Tarentola of Rabo de Junco Islet are surviving individuals of T. pyripeternsis which became extinct on the main island of Sal but survive on an offshore islet.
Distribution & Habitat
Sal (incl. Rabo de Junco Islet?), Cape Verde Islands, Macaronesia
Anatomy & Morphology
Biology & Ecology
Hypodigm
Media
References
Original scientific description:
Mateo, J. A., Geniez, P., Veiret, P. and López-Jurado, L. F. (2022). Reptiles de Macaronesia. Azores-Madeira-Salvajes-Canarias-Cabo Verde. Madrid, Spain: Asociación Herpetológica Española. 473 pp. [NB: not all of the book's authors may be responsible for the scientific description of this taxon]
Other references:
Angel, F. (1935). Lezards des îles du Cap Vert, rapportés par M. Le Professeur Chevalier. Description de espèces nouvelles. Bulletin du Musée d'Histoire Naturelle 2: 165-169.
Angel, F. (1937). Sur la faune hepetologique de l'Alchipel du Cap Vert. XII Congrés International Zoologie, Lisbonne 1935, 9: 1693-1700.
Fernández-Palacios, José María, Fructuoso, Melania, Illera, Juan Carlos, Rando, Juan Carlos, de Nascimento, Lea, Fernández-Palacios, Enrique, Patiño, Jairo, Otto, Rüdiger, Castilla-Beltrán, Álvaro, González, Esther Martín, Orihuela-Rivero, Raúl, Alcover, Josep Antoni, Whittaker, Robert J. (2025). A synthesis of terrestrial species extinctions in the Macaronesian Islands and their correspondence with human occupancy. PNAS Nexus 4(8): pgaf215. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf215 [Supplementary data (.docx)]
Hernández-Montero, Marcos, Santos, Marcio and Silva, Patrik. (2022). First record of Tarentola for the Island of Sal, Cabo Verde. Zoologia Caboverdiana 10(1): 16-18.
Vasconcelos, R., Brito, J. C., Carranza, S. and Harris, D. J. (2013). Review of the distribution and conservation status of the terrestrial reptiles of the Cape Verde Islands. Oryx 47(1): 77-87. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605311001438
Vasconcelos, R., Perera, A., Geniez, P., Harris, D. J. and Carranza, S. (2012). An integrative taxonomic revision of the Tarentola geckos (Squamata, Phyllodactylidae) of the Cape Verde islands. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 164(2): 328-360. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-3642.2011.00768.x