Patel Harshil, Thackeray Tejas, Sheth Chintan, Khandekar Akshay, Agarwal Ishan
Thackeray Wildlife Foundation; Mumbai; 400051; India.
Wildlife Conservation Society-India; Bangalore; 560097; India; School of Humanities; Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; The University of Sydney; NSW 2006; Australia.
Zootaxa. 2024 Oct 15;5523(2):151-170. doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.5523.2.1.
We describe a new species of small-sized Calotes from mid-elevation (~1270 m asl.), swidden or shifting cultivation areas in the Subansiri river basin, Upper Subansiri District, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Mitochondrial sequence data (ND2) recovers Calotes sinyik sp. nov. as the closely related sister taxon to an unnamed species from Medog, Tibet; the two falling in a broader clade including C. paulus + C. zolaiking and species of the C. emma and C. mystaceus groups. The new species is 7.8% divergent in ND2 sequence data from the unnamed lineage from Medog and deeply divergent (≥ 21.6-28.1%) from other congeners. The new species can easily be distinguished from regional congeners by its small adult body size (maximum snout to vent length of 65 mm) and heterogenous dorsal scales, and from its closest relatives C. paulus and C. zolaiking by having 54 or 55 midbody scale rows and 42 or 43 vertebral scales. It is likely that many more allied species remain to be discovered from Northeast India, which remains poorly surveyed across taxonomic groups.
我们描述了一种来自印度阿鲁纳恰尔邦上苏班西里区苏班西里河流域中海拔（约海拔1270米）刀耕火种或轮作种植区的小型变色树蜥新物种。线粒体序列数据（ND2）显示，新种辛氏变色树蜥（Calotes sinyik sp. nov.）是来自西藏墨脱的一个未命名物种的近缘姐妹分类单元；这两个物种属于一个更广泛的进化枝，其中包括保罗变色树蜥（C. paulus）、佐莱变色树蜥（C. zolaiking）以及艾玛变色树蜥（C. emma）和须变色树蜥（C. mystaceus）种群的物种。新物种在ND2序列数据上与墨脱未命名谱系的差异为7.8%，与其他同属物种的差异很大（≥21.6 - 28.1%）。新物种可以通过其较小的成年体型（最大吻肛长度为65毫米）和不均匀的背鳞与区域同属物种轻松区分，并且通过具有54或55行中段鳞片和42或43行椎骨鳞片与最亲近的亲属保罗变色树蜥和佐莱变色树蜥区分开来。很可能在印度东北部还有更多相关物种有待发现，该地区在各分类类群方面的调查仍然很不足。
