Southern Green Python

The green tree python (Morelia viridis), is a species of snake in the family Pythonidae. The species is native to New Guinea, some islands in Indonesia, and the Cape York Peninsula in Australia. First described by Hermann Schlegel in 1872, it was known for many years as Chondropython viridis. As its common name suggests, it is a bright green snake that can reach a total length (including tail) of 2 m (6.6 ft) and a weight of 1.6 kg (3.5 lb), with females slightly larger and heavier than males. Living generally in trees, the green tree python mainly hunts and eats small reptiles and mammals. It is a popular pet, and numbers in the wild have suffered with large-scale smuggling of wild-caught green tree pythons in Indonesia. Despite this, the green tree python is rated as least concern on the IUCN Red List of endangered species.

Taxonomy

German naturalist Hermann Schlegel described the green tree python in 1872 as Python viridis, from two specimens collected in the Aru Islands of Indonesia. His countryman Adolf Bernhard Meyer erected the genus Chondropython (though recognised similarity to Morelia) and described the green tree python as Chondropython azureus in 1874, from a specimen collected in "Kordo", later determined to be Korido on Biak Island. This was destroyed in World War II. French naturalist Henri Émile Sauvage described Chondropython pulcher from a specimen from Mansinam Island, Irian Jaya.

For many years, the green tree python was classified as the only species of the genus Chondropython, with the binomial name C. viridis. In 1993, Professor Arnold G. Kluge published a detailed phylogenetic analysis that found that the green tree python was nested within the genus Morelia and most closely related to the rough-scaled python (M. carinata). Hence, it became Morelia viridis. Two studies of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA published in 2013 and 2014 came up with differing results, one confirming the species in Morelia, the other placing it as an early offshoot with the Children's python genus Antaresia. This latter result was thought anomalous by later researchers.

Raymond Hoser described the Australian population as a separate subspecies Chondropython viridis shireenae, after his wife Shireen, noting that the taxon consistently had white markings along the backbone, whereas snakes from New Guinea and Indonesia only sometimes had this trait, and the molecular analysis would bear out the distinctness. A genetic study by Lesley Rawlings and Stephen Donnellan in 2003 of mitochondrial DNA of the green tree python found two distinct lineages: a southern lineage comprising populations of Australia, the Aru Islands, and New Guinea south of the central highlands, and a northern lineage of New Guinea north of the central highlands and the Vogelkop Peninsula, and Biak Island. The two likely diverged around 5 million years ago with the rising of the central mountain range in New Guinea. The authors suggested this might explain poor breeding success in Australia if people were unknowingly trying to breed the northern and southern green tree pythons, as they were not closely related. The two taxa are indistinguishable in appearance.

Description