![\"Northern](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/4JN18N8_Gecko_Photo_1_png.jpeg\")
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\nNorthern striped gecko.
\nPhoto: Supplied\/Sara Smerdon\n<\/p>\n
Researchers are using tiny backpacks to keep track of New Zealand’s most elusive gecko species.<\/p>\n
The northern striped gecko live on Coromandel Peninsula and are so skilled at camouflage, they weren’t discovered until 1997.<\/p>\n
University of Otago zoologist Dr Jo Monks and masters student Harriet Wills have tracked them for the past few months, by attaching small radio transmitters to their backs.<\/p>\n
“The goal was to really try and figure out objectively how these elusive northern striped geckos are using habitat, and therefore unlock a bit of their ecology, with some insights into management,” Dr Monks said. “They camouflage extremely well with their environment and they’re pretty cryptic in the way they behave.<\/p>\n
“Particularly the extent of their distribution is one of the remaining mysteries. We’re scratching the surface of understanding their ecology.”<\/p>\n
The researchers had attached tiny radio transmitters to the geckos as a way to keep track of their movements.<\/p>\n
![\"Northern](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/4OF3CDJ_Gecko_Photo_4_jpg.jpeg\")
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\nNorthern striped gecko are skilled at camouflage.
\nPhoto: Supplied\/Sara Smerdon\n<\/p>\n
“There’s a tiny little radio transmitter that sits inside what kind of looks like a backpack, wrapped self-adhesive tape and we make a little harness out of it,” Monks explained.<\/p>\n
They discovered the gecko had used their camouflage to hide under foliage and in trees throughout the forests of the Coromandel Peninsula.<\/p>\n
“We’ve found they use habitat in a way we previously didn’t have insight into,” she said. “If they’re close to a forest edge during the day, they are pretty much hiding under leaf litter and that’s somewhere we could never find them before.<\/p>\n
“They’re moving well into the forest and what they do when they’re up in the dense forest is they spend a lot more time in the canopy, probably to gain the warmth of the sun.<\/p>\n
“This really gives us some evidence that they’re a lot more widely distributed across the Coromandel than where they’ve currently been found, which is only from a few locations.”<\/p>\n