Hi folks,

Back in 1990 Underwood & Stimson assumed the python species to form a natural group and divided the python generas into two tribes. One called "Pythonini", containing only the genus Python, for the african and asian pythons, and a second named "Morelini", including the generas Morelia and Aspidites for all the australasian pythons species.
Because of their results of the phylogenetic analysis for the Australiasian pythons that were "...not yet robust, cautionusly, follow Storr et al. (1986) and assign all of these species to Morelia" (Underwood & Stimson, 1990:594). Earlier Schwander & Dessauer (1986) tested McDowell's (1975) taxonomic proposals by Immunodiffusion analysis and found the australasian species indistinguishable from each other, but clearly distinguishable from P. regius. This might have supported Underwood & Stimsons assumption, placing them all into the genus Morelia, even though earlier workers (i.e. Worrell 1960, McDowell, 1975) found out a lot of morphological differences between e.g Liasis and Morelia.

So, even though, obviously different morphological characters separate the species and the generas, U & S lumped together everything. Perhaps it was a common thing to do these days?

Any suggestions?

Cheers,
Wulf





Reference:
Underwood & Stimson, 1990, A classification of pythons (Serpentes:Pythonidae), J. Zoo. Lond. 221, 556-603
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http://www.leiopython.de - the white-lipped python site -
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