A new species of Hemiphyllodactylus Bleeker, 1860 (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from Son La Province, Vietnam

An integrative analysis revealed a new species of the <i>Hemiphyllodactylus typus</i> group collected from local house walls and surrounding karst formations in Pa Kha 1 Village, Long Phieng Commune, Son La Province, northwestern Vietnam. <i>Hemiphyllodactylus pakhaensis</i> <b>sp. nov</b>. is recovered within Clade 4 of the <i>typus</i> group, exhibiting an uncorrected pairwise distance greater than 6.65% from all other congeners based on a 1,043 base pair segment of the ND2 gene. It can be distinguished from its congeners by body size, chin scales, circumnasal scales, dorsal and ventral scales. A multiple factor analysis using normalized morphometric, meristic, and categorical character types recovered its unique, non-overlapping placement in morphospace as statistically significantly different from closely related species in the Clade 4. The discovery and description of this new <i>Hemiphyllodactylus</i> species represent the first record of the Clade 4 from Vietnam and increase the number of species of this genus recorded in the country to 12.