Mourning Gecko

🌍 Overview

The mourning gecko holds a remarkable distinction: wild populations are almost entirely female and reproduce through parthenogenesis - producing fertile eggs without fertilization. Originally native to islands across the Indo-Pacific, they have colonized tropical coastlines worldwide by hitchhiking on cargo ships. They are tiny, fast, and thrive in communal setups, making them fascinating display animals.

📋 Quick Facts

📜 History

Auguste Duméril and Gabriel Bibron named the species in 1836, but the work that made it a laboratory animal came much later: Orlando Cuellar and Arnold Kluge documented natural parthenogenesis in it in 1972, and it has been a standard subject for cytogenetics ever since. Later chromosome work showed the species is not one clone but many. Each lineage appears to descend from a separate hybridization between Lepidodactylus moestus and a still undescribed relative, producing diploid animals with 44 chromosomes and triploids with 66. Developmental biologists adopted it because no pairing is needed, every individual lays, and clonemates are genetically identical, and those same traits are what let one stray animal found a colony.

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🤩 Fun Facts