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NZ researchers discover two new lizards

Ben McKayAAP
The gecko discovered by researchers in Nelson Lakes is covered in distinctive tiny white spots.
Camera IconThe gecko discovered by researchers in Nelson Lakes is covered in distinctive tiny white spots. Credit: AAP

Conservationists hope the discovery of two new lizard species can shift the attention of bird-obsessed New Zealanders towards their own "land of lizards".

Genetic testing of lizards found in the South Island's most wild places last summer has confirmed two new species: a skink from the Mataura Range in Southland and a gecko in Nelson Lakes National Park.

"The team in Nelson Lakes was out looking for another species, an elusive gecko that hadn't been seen for 53 years," Jo Monks, the lizard survey project leader at the Department of Conservation, told AAP.

"They found a population but at the same time found something that was really different ... they knew that it was pretty significant.

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"It's a little grey nocturnal gecko, around six centimetres in body length and it's a bit distinctive in that it's got little white spots all over it, which is really unusual."

Dr Monks said the other reptile discovery was a small skink with distinct markings.

"The skink is a little brown skink, it doesn't look wildly different to some of other species in the same place but it has a really distinctive black stripe the whole way down its body and down its tail, and it's got some chocolate brown side stripes."

The discoveries mean New Zealand has 126 different species of skink or gecko found nowhere else in the world.

Unlike many species in Australia and further abroad, only one lays eggs.

"And we're discovering new lizards at a fairly phenomenal rate. There's more to come," Dr Monks says. "Lately it's been a couple of species a year."

While New Zealand has more species of endemic lizards than birds, New Zealanders know little about them.

Kiwis - as suggested by the national moniker - are instead preoccupied with native birds, which flourished in the absence of native land-based mammals prior to human settlement.

Many ionic species like kiwi, takahe, kakapo and kaka are known - and beloved - by New Zealanders, but ironically, the one creature the average New Zealander is likely to name as a native lizard, the tuatara, is not one at all.

"A tuatara is not a lizard, it's its own order," Dr Monks said.

"Most people know that we have some lizards but they are very surprised that we've got more than a handful of species ... so we're trying to change the narrative.

"It really is a 'land of lizards' as well as a 'land of birds'.

"There's a bird of the year competition in New Zealand and this year, a bat won it. So maybe we can enter some lizards next year."

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