A gecko that scampers up the side of a Florida house or in Central or South America near the Equator is likely to be an African house gecko (Hemidactylus mabouia).The African house gecko, which is small and brown in appearance, is now common in the Western Hemisphere. The gecko is thought to have originated in southern Africa, where it was found in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and other areas. How did it cross the ocean to get here?Researchers have published a paper in Royal Society Open Science on Wednesday, which reveals that H. mabouia's evolutionary history is a complex collection of closely related species. This includes as many as 20 lineages from Africa. They found that only one lineage, Hemidactylus Mabouia sensu strictlyo, was capable of spreading across Central and West Africa and the Americas.This paper offers a new method to test the old hypothesis that African housegeckos were stowed away aboard vessels used in trans-Atlantic slavery trade. It is believed that the slave trade also transported the Aedes Aegypti moth and other earthworm species to Americas via the African continent. The new research further uncovers its ecological and human effects.
