Jaragua sphaero

Description

Sphaerodactylus ariasae, commonly called the Jaragua sphaero or the Jaragua dwarf gecko, is the smallest species of lizard in the family Sphaerodactylidae. Sphaerodactylus ariasae is the world's smallest known reptile. The second-smallest is S. parthenopion, native to the British Virgin Islands. The Jaragua sphaero measures 14-18 mm (0.55-0.71 in) from the snout to the base of the tail and can fit on a US 25-cent coin. It has an average weight of just 0.13 g (0.00455 of an ounce). By contrast, the blue whale is 1,600 times longer and more than 1 billion times heavier. The geographic range of S. ariasae is believed to be limited to Jaragua National Park, in the southernmost tip of the Barahona Peninsula, in the extreme southwest of the Dominican Republic and nearby forested Beata Island. The preferred natural habitat of S. ariasae is the leaf litter of the forest floor of dry forests with limestone substratum. S. ariasae was first described by Blair Hedges, a Pennsylvania State University evolutionary biologist, and Richard Thomas, a University of Puerto Rico biologist, in the December 2001 issue of the Caribbean Journal of Science. The Jaragua sphaero's binomial name was chosen in honor of herpetologist Yvonne Arias, the leader of the Dominican conservation organization Grupo Jaragua, which was instrumental in securing the environmental protection of Jaragua National Park. Sphaerodactylus is a genus of geckos from the Americas that are distinguished from other Gekkota by their small size, by their round, rather than vertical, eye pupils, and by each digit terminating in a single, round adhesive pad or scale, from which their name (Sphaero = round, dactylus = finger) is derived. All species in this genus are rather small, but two species, S. ariasae and S. parthenopion, are tiny, and with a snout-vent length of about 1.6 cm (0.63 in) the smallest reptiles in the world. Fossil remains referred to Sphaerodactylus have been recovered from Dominican amber.