Gymnodactylus albogularis Duméril and Bibron, 1836 Gonatodes albogularis, which has been called a number of vernacular names in English, is a smallish species of gecko found in warm parts of Central and South America, Cuba, Hispaniola and Jamaica.

The fingers do not have lamellar pads for climbing smooth surfaces like many other geckos but instead have normal claws like most lizards.

This gecko was first scientifically described by André Marie Constant Duméril and Gabriel Bibron in 1836 using a few specimens sent to Paris by Auguste Plée from Martinique.

They also were able to examine numerous specimens collected in Cuba by the anarchist polymath Ramón de la Sagra, who had arrived in Paris from that island the previous year with many objects of natural history.

[4] There are four subspecies as of 2020:[4] There are two syntypes for the nominate form which are kept at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris.

[4] This name was chosen by Duméril and Bibron for this taxon because the specimens they examined had the lower part of the head and the neck being "un blanc extrêmement pur", this colour also being found on the thighs, belly and underside of the tail, which contrasted sharply with "un noir profond" of the flanks and sides of the body -they describe the anterior of the creature as slate-coloured, and the breast whitish-grey.

In La Guajira, where the language is the Arawakan Wayuunaiki or heavily influenced by it, this gecko is called curumachár or culumasár.

[11] The Mexican Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad officiated the vernacular name in Spanish of geco cabeza amarilla in 2001.

Males have a larger snout-vent length, distance from tip of head to the base of the tail.

Both males and females reach sexual maturity at the same size with the ability to reproduce any time during the year.

[11][13][15] The nominate subspecies is known from the Lesser Antilles, northern Colombia (Valle del Cauca, Chocó,[4] La Guajira),[11] Venezuela (Barinas and elsewhere).

The first specimens were supposedly collected on Martinique in the early 19th century, but the species has never been recovered from that island again.

There are some records from Trinidad and Tobago, but as of 2018 it is believed that these are in error and based on misidentifications with G. vittatus, which is an extremely common species in that country.

[11] The populations in Venezuela are found in the ecoregions of: the islands of the coast of the mainland, the coastal strip of the mainland, the lowlands around Lake Maracaibo, the Cordillera de Mérida, the Serranía del Perijá, the hills of Lara and Falcón and the Orinoco Delta.

It is absent from the central Llanos (plains), the Amazon rainforest in the south, and the Guyana Shield in the east, which together correspond to the vast majority of the territory of the country.

[4] G. albogularis fuscus was first collected in Nicaragua, likely at the port town of El Rama, although as of 1988 the holotype is missing.

It is also distributed in Panama, Costa Rica,[4] El Salvador,[11] and Cuba, including Cayo Santa María,[4] and western Colombia.

Monitoring for the creature by gecko specialist herpetologists from 1995 to 2005 throughout southern Florida failed to provide any evidence that the species remained extant in the region.

[4][21] The species also occur in Mexico (Chiapas, Veracruz), Guatemala and Honduras, but it is unclear to which subspecies these populations belong.

[11] Gonatodes albogularis prefers to lay their eggs in communal sites to maximize the hatching success and extra protection from predators.

[19] Yellow-headed gecko are able to differentiate between coloration and brightness with direct consequences to mating partner selections.

Females prefer males with brighter colors, so the ability to detect different brightness has direct effects on mate selection.

Some of these behaviors include throat depressions, push-ups, tail displays, whole body waving, and bites.

This gecko initially starts with more subtle movements by only moving one part of their body like throat depressions.

These parasites are classified as generalist helminths and typically found in the digestive tract (stomach and small and large intestines).

The escape behavior theory says that the lizard will lose its tail only when the risk of predation outweighs the cost of fleeing.

As the tail grows back, the escape behavior tends to decrease, because the lizard is not as susceptible to predation, because they have more protection.

[28] The lizards will also stay closer to their shelter once they lose their tail to limit flight initiation distance.

[31] In Haiti it is primarily found along the coast as an "edificarian" -this means it prefers human buildings as habitat.

Up until the 1950s the pega-pega was much feared in the Antilles, where the superstition formerly existed that once it climbed on you it would latch itself so tightly it would be almost impossible to remove, with the best remedies being burning it off with a lit cigarette, a hot clothes iron or by pouring boiling water over it.