Subdigital integumentary microstructure in Cyrtodactylus (Squamata: Gekkota): do those lineages with incipiently expressed toepads exclusively exhibit adhesive setae?

• Philipp Ginal,
• Yannick Ecker,
• Timothy Higham,
• L. Lee Grismer,
• Benjamin Wipfler,
• Dennis Rödder,
• Anthony Russell and
• Jendrian Riedel

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2026, 17, 38–56, doi:10.3762/bjnano.17.4

• , making it a promising candidate for studying toepad evolution. We investigated the subdigital microstructures of 27 Cyrtodactylus species occupying a wide range of habitats, and exhibiting a spectrum of subdigital morphology, from the presence of the ancestral condition of small, rounded scales to the

• significantly among both microstructure types and ecotypes. Keywords: ecomorphology; evolution; habitat-specific adaptations; microfibrils; microornamentation; reptiles; toepad evolution; Introduction How a species’ habitat influences its mode of locomotion and how species adapt to effectively traverse and

• of toepad evolution in Cyrtodactylus, Riedel et al. [43] identified two robust transitions towards macroscopically identifiable incipient toepads within the genus, one at the base of the brevipalmatus group and one at the base of the Melanesian trunk clade (the common ancestor of C. novaeguineae and