Hi Richard, hi Steno,



happy New Year to you and yours and all the best for 2006!



Good to see you here again, though.



Steno,

I haven't heard of any recently released Morelia paper and would be dying to read that sheet. But in fact, until today (at the "post Kluge" there actually is no real change obvious in what you mentioned. The so-called "Spilota-complex" until today comprises a number of subspecies partly introduced as species by Wells & Wellington (1984/85) but not accepted for quite a time, due to a lack of evidence. I recall Underwood & Stimson (1990) had completely ignored their arrangements and later Kluge (1993) used few of the names. I remember Dave & Tracy Barker were the first to use all the names but placed them as subspecies within the M. spilota spilota. This in any way was the best deal at that time, even better than calling them all Morelia spilota variegata var.

Some of the species exist sympatrically next to each other, but there may be hybrids within the intergradation zones were available. Due to a lot of cross-breeding experiments we know that all these so-called carpet pythons are able to interbreed and I myself have even produced off-springs of M. nauta x M. sp. cheynei. This evidence may support finding that specimens of the genus Morelia are very close related to each other.



So, anyway, the paper would be of interest.



Cheers,

Wulf
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