Two new species of the Cnemaspisgalaxia complex (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from the eastern slopes of the southern Western Ghats

Two new species allied to are described from the eastern slopes of the south Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu, India. Both new species are members of the subclade within the clade. The two new species can be easily distinguished from all other members of the clade and each other by a combination of nonoverlapping morphological characters such as small body size, distinct colouration of both sexes, the number of dorsal tubercles around the body, the number or arrangement of paravertebral tubercles, the number of midventral scales across the belly and longitudinal ventral scales from mental to cloaca, besides uncorrected pairwise ND2 and 16S sequence divergence of ≥ 7.4% and ≥ 2.7%. The two new species are distributed from low elevation, deciduous forests of Srivilliputhur, and add to the five previously known endemic vertebrates from Srivilliputhur-Megamalai Tiger Reserve.