Reptilia · Squamata
Gehyra oceanicaLesson, 1829
Pacific Dtella
Photograph by Sabine's Sunbird, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A tree-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating gecko from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 102 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Gekkonidae › Gehyra
- Grows to
- 102mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 15.5years
Longer than 91% of all geckos anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 23 to 220 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
38 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2015
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 15.5years
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009, Werner et al. 1993: 10.5; Slavens and Slavens 1999: 10.5, Brown 2012: 15.5
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 102mm4 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 74.8mm3 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 74.8mm3 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 31mm1.25 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 31mm1.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 20.13g0.71 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 7.9g0.28 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.88g0.03 oz
Shai Meiri, unpublished
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Found only on islands
- Lowest it lives · above sea level
- 63m
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 300m
- Range size
- 84,830km²
Arthropods, occasionally small lizards (McCoy 1980, Zug 1991, Zug 2013, Black 1983, see pictures in Buden and Taborosi 2016) and nectar (McCoy 2015)
Mesquita et al. 2016
Nocturnal, but basks in the afternoon (Zug 2013), nocturnal (Buden and Taborosi 2016, Black 1983)
e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016, Buden and Taborosi 2016, Black 1983
IUCN (0 to 300)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 1.8eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 1.6–2eggs
usually 2, occasionally 1 (Zug 2013), mean 1.96 (Mesquita et al. 2016), 2-3 (Goldberg 2018: did he mix it with mutilata?)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Lesson
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1829
- Type locality
- Disputed among many islands
Keeping one
16 in × 10 in × 16 in(41 × 26 × 41 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Lives in vegetation, so height and climbing structure matter more than floor space.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length of 4 in (102 mm), at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Pacific Dtella. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
3kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 20 g, the heaviest recorded for Pacific Dtella — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Clutches in a year
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
Others in Gekkonidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Gehyra oceanica. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gehyra-oceanica
@misc{gehyra_oceanica_2026,
title = {Gehyra oceanica},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gehyra-oceanica}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.