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Bynoe's Gecko - Heteronotia binoei
Bynoe's Gecko is a slender, long tailed species growing up to around 11-12cm in total length. Individuals are always covered in strongly keeled and prickly scales, but are quite soft to touch.
A surprising variety of colours and patterns exist among Bynoe's Geckoes; commonly seen colours include various shades of yellow, brown, beige, cream, black and white, with most lizards carrying at least two or three distinct colours. Individuals may be strongly or weakly banded, spotted, blotched, speckled or occasionally uniform in colour.
This is one of the most widespread, abundant and familiar of country-regionplaceAustralia's reptile species, being found in every mainland state and territory except ACT and occupying a huge variety of habitat types ranging from tropical rainforest to temperate arid zones, central deserts, woodlands and coastal sand dunes.
Bynoe's Gecko is a terrestrial species and like all of country-regionplaceAustralia's geckoes is primarily nocturnal, although in captivity it will often be quite active during the day.
When inactive they take shelter under fallen wood, rocks or other debris, or in small burrows. They eat a wide range of small insects, spiders and other invertebrates.
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Heteronotia binoei is actually comprised of four distinct species (yet to be named), with one being very special and unique. This unique species is made up entirely of females which clone themselves without the assistance of any other individuals, via a process known as parthenogenesis. This cloning process has been going on since soon after major climatic changes took place in country-regionplaceAustralia, over 100,000 years ago, so the parthenogens alive today are clones of lizards which lived in ancient times! Unlike the other species (and almost all other animals), these parthenogens are triploid (the have three copies of each of their genes). Apart from their genetics and the way they reproduce, the four species are very similar, which is why they are all still referred to by the same name.
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