Title:
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Status, ecology and conservation of endemic geckos in Mauritius
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In the past 400 years, there has been a drastic decline in the number of endemic species on
mainland Mauritius, with the island losing 69% of its original reptile community. Of 17 endemic
species, only five mostly Phelsuma species survived the human mediated disturbances on
mainland Mauritius. These remaining arboreal endemic geckos still play important ecological roles
in the Mauritian ecosystem. However, habitat fragmentation and introduction of invasive species
have increased the threats to these endemic geckos. The recent invasion of the bigger Phelsuma
grandis (giant Madagascar day gecko) has increased the threats posed to the existence of endemic
geckos, while habitat loss and fragmentation is also playing a major role in gecko decline,
particularly for Phelsuma guimbeaui (lowland forest day gecko). In this thesis, I studied the
ecological effects of P. grandis on endemic geckos at a landscape and local scale using species
.distribution and binomial mixture models. I also designed markers from microsatellite and
mitochondrial DNA to research the population. genetics of P. guimbeaui in response to habitat
fragmentation. Finally, I explored habitat selection of P. guimbeaui to find suita~le sites for potential
translocations. First, I showed that P. grandis shared many characteristics of an invasive species
and could persist in a relatively large range of environmental conditions. The results highlight that P.
grandis and endemic gecko distributions can overlap. Where P .. grandis has invaded areas
occupied by endemic geckos, the abundance of the Mauritian species has declined by an average
of 89%. This study provides strong evidence that P. grandis and endemic geckos are unlikely to coexist
in sympatry. Second, I designed arid amplified 44 markers from an enriched-microsatellite
genomic library. They were tested on ten subpopulations and 20 were selected to examine the
population genetics of the fragmented population of P. guimbeaui. Here, the microsatellite results
suggested that most subpopulations were genetically different, with low effective population sizes
and no migrations, while simulations showed that the different subpopulations were at high risks of
losing genetic diversity and extinction. Mitochondrial DNA showed that the fragmented
subpopulations used to be part of a panmictic population. Using the findings of this genetic study,
12 subpopulations were identified as viable and 18 subpopulations were at high risk. Third, I
showed that P. guimbeaui males had a larger home range than females and males overlap more
with females than males and geckos selected habitats with higher plant diversity, with trees that had
taller and larger trunks and a higher cavity density. Adult geckos selected different habitat features
compared to sub-adults and juveniles. The findings of this research were synthesised into a review
to formulate the conservation assessment of the endemic geckos on mainland Mauritius.
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