Reptile Fight Club - Carpet Python Taxonomy w/ Scott Eipper

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

In this episode, Justin and Chuck are joined by Scott Eipper to debate carpet python taxonomy. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Nature 4 UFollow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to the MGR Network. Thank you. Welcome to another edition of Reptile Fight Club. With me as always, Chuck Poland. What's up, everybody? How you been, man? Good, dude. Good. Busy? Yeah, ready for the weekend. I'm long week. How about you? Yeah. Ready for the weekend. I'm long week. So how about you? Yeah, yeah. Good. Good. Just Heidi started work up at Utah State. So it's been nice to have her up on campus with me and doing lunch.

Lunch dates. Yeah. Nice. Got a new book to check out. So the secret life, social life, secret social lives of reptiles. So I'm excited to dive into that this weekend. Just got that today. So kind of fun. Yeah. The, the library is ever increasing, but that's good. Yeah. Good times. Yeah. Um, well, uh, you, you and our guests today both have extensive, extensive libraries. So definitely. Yeah. We're seeing that right behind him now. So yeah, I guess without further ado, we'll bring on Mr. Scott Aper, the one, the only. How's it going, Scott? Good.

I've actually ordered that book that you just picked up, Justin. So, you know, I purchased that about three months ago. I still haven't so bloody seen it yet. It looks like it's going to be a ripper, though. Yeah, yeah. I'm excited to dive into it. Yeah, Eric had it on our last West Texas trip. So that's, I, I'd seen it, but yeah, I kind of flipped through it. I'm like, yeah,

I better pick this up. Good stuff. Yeah. Well, you've got quite the extensive library. Do you have a, that's only been half of it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's awesome. I'm kind of lucky in that you know my my wife is um she's obviously into herps as well and you know it's the fact that we're both into herps means that you know justifying money on on reptile books isn't isn't so hard to get across the lawn sometimes that's great we were actually going to have we we've invited some people on to talk about that you know spouses that are either both into herps or ones in herps

one not kind of the pros and cons of that scenario yeah that works out because that could be very dangerous if you're both into herps you know you could wind up uh yeah in trouble in some ways. I can only say that ending in T's, but anyway. Indeed. That would be one that if you called me out on that, I'd be politely declined. That's the first response we get. Like, maybe let me check out your podcast, see if that might work. Once people mull it over in their head a little bit, they're like, you know,

take a soft pass on this. Exactly. What is it? You've got to take into consideration the win out of this, whether there's a win or not. That's right. I think the phrase is happy wife, happy life. Or live by life.

Something to that effect yeah of course we all do we all die and live by that that's a statement no for sure okay anyway well um yeah we we've brought you on here to talk about taxonomy so we we've kind of had some uh differing views maybe maybe not maybe we have i don't know that's why we're bringing you here to hash it out a little and see where we fall um we're going to be talking i guess mainly around you know carpet python taxonomy to some extent you know what what uh where they fit in how they kind of are related to each other and and and, uh, go from there. So, um, we will, uh, have the coin toss here. So we'll,

with this coin toss, I'm going to learn from everybody else, right? And I need Chuck to tell me what he's going to go with. We were actually, uh, I will call this in the air, Scott, and you can just take the reverse. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's what we're going to go with. So it's all on you, Chuck, if this goes to shit. It always goes to shit, and it's always on me anyway. So, Scott, we're in this for the penny and the pound.

It's all right. It's all good value anyway. Actually, I got to say this. Before the podcast, Chuck and I were chatting, and I flipped the coin five times. The first two went to me. This, the last three went to Chuck. So it looks like I'm only good on the first toss.

So if we, it's the law of statistical averages. So listen, you might want to, you might want to work this best two out of three. Scott is all I'm saying. Oh, no,

we're not going to change. All right. All right.'re not going to change policy. All right, all right, all right. We're going one step. Okay, so call it. I guess Chuck's on it. So you're going with tails, Scott? Yeah, 100%. And it is tails.

See what I do for you, bro? You see what I do? Chuck, we've got it sorted, mate. This is how the wagon works. Listen, you can take me to Vegas as long as you don't listen to what I say. Just do the opposite of what I say. I'll make you a rich man. Mate, if I go to Vegas, I'm going to be out chasing rattlesnakes.

I'm not going to be able to make money doing anything else. Fair enough. Yeah, that's giving your money away if you're hanging out in the casinos. Yeah. I already give my money away. It's called hurt books.inos. I already give my money away. It's called Herp Books. I see that. Yeah, I was really looking

forward to you making it over for the Herpeton. It's a shame that the buyers had to interrupt that. When things all get sorted out again, I want to talk to Alan Rapasci and say, hey, listen, the people that don't know, Alan Rapaci and Philip DeVosula

sort of put on the Herpeton Conference and, you know, we can't wait to sort of go. But when we do eventually get over to the stage, we're going to talk to Alan about it and say, hey, what's coming up? What can we do? And then maybe we can do something with him on one of his tables at one of the shows or something like that and at least try and you know give some bang for the buck so to speak yeah yeah try and do the best we can unfortunately the way the travel thing where we couldn't get

refunds and we couldn't do this and we couldn't do that and it was just all bullshit so yeah um yeah what do you do that mess around the world that's for sure there's a lot of people that have suffered covid a hell of a lot worse than us we haven't none of our friends have passed so you know i think at the end of the day we've got to put it in perspective and understand that this is a global issue and that it is what it is yeah i just i just got an email about a a co-worker that i used to work with back in the day when i was at my job the first time and he just passed away from covet complications which that's horrible he's a great guy so it sucks it sucks yeah there's been some few there's been a few herpers that have passed

as well and you know particularly in the states and you you sit there and you know you don't really know them you know a lot of us don't really know a lot of these people, but you know all of them or you've heard their name before or whatever and it does bring it home. And, you know, the media is excellent at sort of hyping things up and making things out to be sort of worse than what it is. I mean, something about Australia's Americans have strived up against Australians being invaded

by their government or something like that. Oh, yeah, there's so many. The right wing over here that think that Australia is under the government's thumb and they can't do anything and they hate it and, yeah, they're itching for rebellion. Yeah, I think they're just looking for a fight at the end of the day. Well, I mean, I think take the the overhyped media to say oh it's not really a

big deal and then we kind of go the opposite way which is not a great plan of action either you know just well let it run its course we'll lose you know a good two percent of our population but hey that's the cost of doing business i i don't think i can get on board with that only if you're in if you're not in that uh two percent you know if you're in the yeah yeah yeah you don't you don't care until it until it touches you well yeah you know that's dependent we're gonna touch things let's let's crack on in regards to touching those yeah yeah so so we didn't really decide who's taking what side here yeah you won the coin you won the coin toss so you get to decide your side i thought about really throwing justin for a loop here and actually making him argue

that they shouldn't be subspecies that's funny because i thought the same thing i was gonna have you argue that they should be but i think being on the wrong end of the coin toss doesn't it but i think i think nick martin would actually have a conniption if that was the case um so so let's go with um he doesn't listen. What are we kidding? He doesn't listen to the podcast. Yeah, but people tell him things. Yeah. No, look, let's both play to where we traditionally fit, I suppose. Sure. And, you know, at that point in time, I think so.

We'll go with it. I'm pro subspecific races for some of the carpet pythons and that um you know this is restricted i suppose to carpet pythons themselves as well you know rather than saying that every subspecies should be a race in every species that's not what i'm suggesting at all so it's it's evidence-based approach is what we're looking for. Okay. Sure. So, yeah. Justin is going to be, then what's the Justin argument here, Justin? Yeah.

I mean, I guess the certain ones should be subspecies or there should be a different division or subspecies arrangement, then I guess, yeah, that's the hard thing is, I guess I maybe saw it more simplistically as like subspecies versus no subspecies or subspecies versus races or however you want to put it. You know, that was kind of, you know. Yeah. I just want to nail it down so it's clear, you know, which direction each of you are kind of arguing. Yeah. So I think that, I think that's pretty clear in that, you know which direction each of you are kind of arguing yeah so i think that i think that's pretty clear in that you know that there's subspecies there's races and that there's there's species within carpet pythons okay so there's not so within the genus marilia there's there's carpet pythons ruscoe pythons green pythons and within the carpet pythons, green pythons. And within the carpet pythons, then you have some subspecific variation. Okay.

But there is also races. And the question then becomes is where does a subspecies begin or a species begin and where does a race begin? And, you know, the problem, I suppose, and this is where the debate comes in, is that species, subspecies, and this is where the debate comes in, is that species, subspecies and race is arbitrary. We're looking at a snapshot of a period of evolutionary time and we're trying to place these square pegs in round holes and place things in boxes where we want to put them.

And this is where the debate comes in, is where does something generate its own box or where does it generate its own peg? Or when should it just be pushed within the realm of that peg? And I suppose that's where the question is. And this is why we're always going to see changes in taxonomic nomenclature. And I suppose that's where we're going and uh i think that's that's basically where it's at would you agree with that yeah i mean i think i

agree with you fully that they're you know the taxonomy is arbitrary you know it depends on who's doing the research where they draw the lines there There's no clear like rules or as far as where you make the cut. So it's up to whoever's doing the research. And if they're a lumper, then they're going to spin the research to lump everything together. And if they're a splitter, then they're going to split everything apart. So it's really a difficult topic. And so, I mean, this is obviously neither of us are taxonomists, so it's kind of a, just a, an exercise in, you know, maybe, uh, getting our frustrations out by chatting about the things we're frustrated about. I don't know. Or, or, you know, and, and hopefully, you know,

we get some, uh, you know, interesting things discussed and, and it can be a benefit for the listener. But, um, so I, you know, I, I guess, you know, I've, I've heard you make some, some comments about, you know, maybe the East coast carpets, that's all the same thing, you know, that just up and down the East coast is all the same thing. And I guess that's where I kind of, uh, have a differing opinion and, and I, I feel like there's some evidence to support, you know, what I'm looking at. And so that's kind of where I'm coming from, I guess, to get this thing started. So maybe you being a carpet python, you know, writing a book on carpet pythons, maybe you should give the listeners an overview of what a carpet python is. Yeah. So, you know, there's a group of snakes that we refer to as carpet pythons that would include members of the genus Morelia. Now, more specifically, three species, Morelia spoloda, Morelia brettalee, and Morelia imbricata.

And so those are the three species that are typically referred to as carpet pythons. Also included in Morelia, as Scott mentioned before, is Morelia viridis and now Morelia zuria, as well as Morelia carinata. And I think that's all that's left after all the other taxonomic revisions that have been done, removing the scrub pythons and own Pelleansis and things like that. So when we're talking carpet pythons, we're talking those three species. And, you know, obviously Scott lives in Australia, so he has that nice benefit of being over there. And that's kind of where a lot of my ideas about what carpet pythons are changed is when I visited Australia and, you know, got to see some in the field and kind of got digging a little deeper in the literature.

So I think most of my current thinking revolves around some work that's been done initially by Taylor in his doctoral dissertation and then carried on by Sia Vaglia. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but her work in kind of continuing on. Now, this work was done mainly to try to identify different regional, you know, where an animal originated so they could prosecute in the case of, you know, an illegal animal being apprehended or somebody, you know, trying to smuggle animals so they could figure out where that animal came from. Because obviously, carpet pythons range up into New Guinea. And so, they're allowed to be legally exported and imported into various countries throughout the world. So it is legal to export Morelia Spallota from New Guinea. And so, you know, they can't really

necessarily hide it if you can figure out where they came from. So that's kind of why they did that research. So, but, but they did do a very nice sampling, the probably the biggest sampling that's been done. And, uh, so that's, that's been very helpful in my thinking in regards to how these things kind of shake out. So I'm, I'm basing a lot of my thoughts around their, um, genetic work, um, to some extent. So the other, the other piece of the puzzle, I guess, is the Atlas of Living Australia that records sightings, um, mostly through scientific studies of where carpet pythons were collected. Um, some others like iNaturalist, you know, it records different sightings and localities of where different carpet pythons are found in Australia. And so kind of using those together to delineate where we're finding carpet pythons

and where there may be gaps in their distribution. So I'll let you get a word in here. Sorry. The paper that you're referring to, you know, that was published in Forensic Science used 52 samples that encompassed both Borrelia and Somalia. Now, of that, you know, there was a swag of stuff from, that looked at the scrub python complex, I suppose, and, you know, that showed some interesting things going

on there with King Horny in regards to the animals from Tully and the animals from the northern part of the Cape and how they played out with the animals in southern New Guinea. And that was one of the reasons why um you know we retained the use of amethystina in our latest snake book was because the the paper by chippendale et al that split king horny away from amethystina said that the difference was that they don't come into contact with each other uh and that Strait Islands were basically the barrier between what is King Horny and Amethystina.

Yeah. When you get up onto the Torres Strait Islands, there's scrub pythons all across the Torres Strait Islands. And like we were just sort of discussing in the pre-show, that the Torres Strait Islands have been separated from Australia and separated from the Australian, separated from Australia and separated from New Guinea by anywhere between 5,000 and 8,000 years.

All right? So it's a very, very short amount of time for something to speciate. And, you know, scrub pythons are a fairly mobile animal, as are carpets, and they tend to move around. So there's probably not enough time realistically for those animals to be separated into species. There's been, you know, gene flow across the populations. And it's probably the same for a lot of the carpet pythons as well.

The carpet pythons are animals that do move around. They're quite mobile. They're generalists in their habitat. They're not specific. They're not restricted to one habitat type. And they do sort of – they're happy enough to breed with things as well. So they will breed – carpet pythons will – a diamond will breed with a coastal carpet, you know, so that's a lot of things you want to call them coastals or whether you want to just call them a northern coloured version

of a carpet python. So I suppose what we need to do is determine what carpet pythons are and what the subspecies are within carpet pythons are and what the subspecies are within carpet pythons. So a few clarifications there. Now, when you say, are you saying that diamonds and coastals or whatever you're calling coastals are separate? They're different?

No. Or are you saying they're the same thing? I'm getting to that. Give me a minute and I'll unpack it. I'll let you keep going. Let me just unpack it for a minute and then by all means shoot me down. What we need to do is we need to go back to the original descriptions as to what actually defines those subspecies or species. So in the case of wells and wellington in the ca yeah

so in the case of mcdowell mcdowell was described as a full species all right okay on the basis that it doesn't look like variegata now its location that it occurs is from northern New South Wales, northern eastern New South Wales, into north Queensland. It does not occur in New Guinea. There's no comment to suggest that it occurs in New Guinea. When you read the description, the re-description of Varugada in that same paper, it only occurs in the Northern Territory. So the animals in PNG don't occur there according to that paper. All right?

They also don't occur in the Kimberley according to that paper either. So you need to then go back and make a determination about where these animals from the Kimberley fit in and where these animals from PNG fit in. Okay? Yeah. Likewise with Shaneye, which a lot of people call Chenneyye,

it's Shane, it's named after a person named Shane. In regards to Shaney, they restricted to the Atherton Tablelands, that was the extent of the description, all right? It was a contrasting coloured carpet python from the Atherton Tablelands. That's the distinction. Now, the Atherton table lands. That's the distinction. Now, the atherton table lands where that occurs occurs within the distribution of what they called McDowell. So you've got Shania and McDowell that aren't separated

from each other. They used images in other papers to suggest this is how to tell them apart, and made reference to to type specimens um in the case of mccaffey it was described from a head alone it didn't have a block from the warren bungles and yet they described other specimens and said that this is there's a pattern difference between them and mcdowell so while taxonomy has changed a hell of a lot over the last uh last couple of hundred years it does make it quite difficult to ascertain what these things are from the original descriptions and so there's been a lot of inference and a lot of questioning about what defines a Murray-Darling carpet,

a coastal carpet, a jungle carpet python, or a top-end carpet. And really the first publication that really sort of spelled it out quite well was Barker and Barker in 1994. They provided photos, they provided the original descriptions, and then they made their distinctions based on what they thought. At that point, after you get to that point, what starts to happen is then people start to use these things called genetics to then start uh looking at the differences between different populations from a genetic point of view and it's been shown and demonstrated that there's

not a lot of support for all of these subspecies as they're originally described and that the carpet pythons from the south coast, inclusive of diamond pythons, which are the type species, coming straight up across the eastern seaboard up into North Queensland and then across. There's very, very little gene differences between the carpet pythons, with the exception of inland carpets. Inland carpets have got some genetic distinction to them, and there's a bit of structuring there.

Now, when you say there's little, what studies are you basing that on? There was a, I'm trying to remember the percentile. I think it was out of Rawlings that it was like 1 or 2%. Rawlings, I mean, they didn't really, I mean, they just used a couple specimens, right? I guess that's my thing is a lot of the analysis only uses one or two specimens. So, I mean, they did show, Rawlings, I think, showed Morelius belota versus Morelius belota variegata.

They had those two separated out. Was it Rawlings? I believe that was the paper. Or Reynolds. Might have been Reynolds. I think you think it was a Reynolds paper. It is Reynolds, yep. So when you look at the paper from Clovaglia,

I'm butchering that name so we can put it together. When you look at that paper. Sounded good to me. glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen glen diamond pythons yeah and they're and they're very close from tilba and gosford yeah um then you have the animals from the southern southern new guinea onto the under cape york cape york they sit there with the animals from darwin northern just the north northern cape york right not not the whole of cape york but more than a cape cape trib yeah they're coming down a pretty far away cape tribulations only mackerel wraith and well cape tribulations only um 70 kilometers up 150 kilometers north of cairns it's not that it's not that far north it's pretty it goes down a fair way. But the Cape Trib, don't they fit up further up?

Because all I'm seeing grouped with the Darwin and the PNG was mackerel wraith ranges. Go to page 302 if you're looking at the paper. Mm-hmm. All right. But anyway, if we then look at go further up you've got animals from capara now capara in new south wales is uh northeast of tari which is down near gloucester which is really close to to sydney uh you know we're talking a couple of hundred kilometres away from the type locality of where Spoloda is probably originated from. And they sit with the animals from Metcalfi sitting within that group.

So you've got these animals from Mackay, Townsville and Tully that sit in between the animals from the southeastern Australian inland carpets versus the far western, northeastern type, south Australian, western Queensland, the reddish-orange McCarthy, I suppose. The Flinders and Gammons ranges group. So those two sort of sit. So then it becomes a little bit sort of convoluted. Does the animals from Mackay, Townsville and Tully,

are they inland carpets? No, I guess that's my my thoughts on this is because i see these these splits and separations and it tells me that they're different like they're not the same i mean they they have an independent grouping right i mean just like your your uh the the northern territory new guinea stuff is is not you you know, it's grouped together in a nice little grouping, just like the Diamonds and the Bradley and all these. I guess that's what I'm looking at when I say there's some structure here. And because they fit in between these things suggests to me that that means they're they're in separate or independent how shallow those nodes are yeah and then that's i guess that's where my my um failure at understanding taxonomy comes in because i i guess i just look at the groupings and see that of course the stuff

from townsville mckay and toly are not the same as the stuff from the center of australia you know over by closer to breadly than to any other carpets you know well the ones the ones that are closest to breadly are diamond pythons yeah yeah according to this yeah yeah and you know i i guess that's that's kind of the where maybe maybe the the genetics doesn't go all the way. Right. It can give you an idea of how things piece out and how things structure out. But genetics isn't everything. Right. I mean, I think you'd agree with that. So it's a good indicating place to start. Right. It gives you a place to start. And I guess taking those, you know, obviously the Northern Territory, PNG, Cape York stuff, that's kind of a nice little package, right? They all fit in nicely genetically to one another. And, you know, they're fairly somewhat diverse from the other groups, you know, according to my eyes. I don't know if that means anything. And I keep meaning to talk to Warren Booth to try to get some insight into how this stuff

shakes out, you know, genetics wise. But when I look at other things, other factors like biogeographical barriers, right, that the Gulf of Carpentaria, right, that barrier there, that separates out those northern territory carpets from pretty much anything on the East Coast. There's no gene flow between what we typically call a Darwin carpet and anything on the East Coast. But there used to be an inland sea. Yeah. The Gulf of Carpentaria used to be an inland sea. And so I guess what I'm saying is that the only gene flow that occurred was probably between PNG and the southern side of the Gulf. Yeah.

And so, and that was separated more than, you know, so the, so the Cape York stuff and the PNG stuff, that was more recent. But the Darwin-New Guinea split happened further back, right? And you can kind of see that to some extent because you've got your Melville Island, Darwin, Connor kind of a little subgroup, you know, whatever you'd call that, versus your McElwraith, Cape Trib, Merauke, and Port Moresby grouping. So you've got an Eastern and an Western lineage. Yeah, and that fits with kind of what you would expect based on where they're at now. And that's all we're looking at as a snapshot. So would you say they're all the same? I mean, they're close related to each other than anything else, but they've been split for 10,000 years.

How long do you need to kind of form a subspecies or a species? Well, it depends. 10,000 years is pretty good. That's the interesting part, isn't it? I suppose you need to convincingly work out what species concept you're going to go with, whether it's a biological species concept, a phylogenetic species concept or whatever. And each one of those have got different arbitrary rules. Those two to what is what. And where a ball python and a woma python, arguably the most basal and the most derived pythons, can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, that's kind of an indication that the biological species concept doesn't quite fit well with reptiles, with pythons. um you know so we so i guess go ahead i suppose the other thing that serves to be considered as well is that this paper is used to two genes as well it used cytochrome b and nd6 i believe

so a lot a lot of the newer genetics work and not on you know as as we've both said we're not geneticists so we're probably butchering this completely um but my understanding is is that you need to have more genes more genes the better resolution the better understanding of what you're getting out of having a single gene or a couple of genes can lead you down a path of uh down an arbitrary path that isn't necessarily accurate. So we need to keep that into consideration. The other point that I would like to make in that. Oh, before you move on to another point, along with that, right?

I think you get gene jockeys that do their analysis and they show some split and they go, oh, there it is. That's the split. And they go with that, even though the biogeography or the just, you know, species that fit together nicely, you know, and share a lot of different traits and share. They're put into separate, you know separate genera even sometimes. You know, the recent paper on Gagnosoma and some of the issues with that where really you're going to split those up even though they are basically the same snake. But then you have great papers too, like that one that just came out recently

in regards to green pythons that split Azuria and Viridis. And they did quite a deep dive on the genetics, right? And partitioned Azuria into, I think it was three subspecies, I think. Which was a little surprising for Donalyn, because he seems to not like subspecies. He's always kind of been against subspecies. I'm not sure. It was interesting to see him describe it.

Well, Steve's published some papers been against subspecies. I'm not sure. It was interesting to see him describe it. Well, Steve's published some papers recently using subspecies. He's a paper on Helioporus australiacus. He's softening on it a little. Yeah. Helioporus australiacus was split into two subspecies rather than two species. And other papers like the Depressa complex where we get four different species out of what was formerly a Gurneya Depressa. And most people who knew about those species knew that that was the thing. That was the case.

So not really surprising. You know, Cunningham skinks and there's a whole swag of stuff that everybody is pretty well aware that there's some speciation or something going on there that just hasn't been sort of pushed out. And I think in fairness, you know, this paper that we're referring to with regards to the carpet pythons, we need to also take into account that they have left them and retained them as Spoloda in this particular paper and that they said that them and retained them as Spoloda in this particular paper. And that they said that Brattle Eye was distinct and they said that

Imbricata was distinct as a subspecies. Now, a number of people have then taken, I suppose, taken a different view of that. You guys were sort of the first guys, with the exception of Wells and Wellington, to apply a full species to Ibricata which is something i agree with and i think the genetics from that paper fairly clearly demonstrates that that is is a good decision as well and so where we maintained the use of imbricata as a full species, as we did with brettaly. However, the rest, there seems to be a lot of gene flow between those two populations.

Now, looking at carpet pythons here in Australia, when you're looking at a carpet python from the northeast coast of New South Wales, it's a slow climb down to a diamond python and it's a slow climb to a coastal carpet python. And you have all of these animals over about a 350-odd kilometre location that all look a bit like this or a bit like that. And then it's the same thing when you get into North Queensland when it comes to jungle

carpet pythons now you look at jungle carpet pythons jungle carpet pythons to me appear to be a a the phenotype that we call jungle carpet pythons tends to be a python that lives in rainforest a carpet python that lives with rainforest but they remain small all right they don't seem to be too large and the reason you know the the thought process i have in regards to why they remain small is that scrub pythons out compete carpet pythons in the rainforest so scrub pythons are this big large animal that occupies the top tier snake predator within the rainforest. And so the carpet pythons occupy a smaller niche for a second tier predator. All right.

Now, when you get out onto the drier locations in North Queensland, where the carpet pythons do better than scrub pythons. All right. You start to get the big, big carpet pythons do better than scrub pythons all right you start to get the big big carpet pythons again okay now if you go to a place called crewm at tops which is uh inland southeast from a place called calliope down near uh about 400 kilometers north of br Brisbane, carpet pythons that you get in the gorges of Kroomba Tops are tiny, small, highly contrasting carpet pythons because a strongly contrasting carpet python is an animal that effectively camouflages the indappled light.

Okay? If you have something that's all a solid colour, it's not going to sort of live a very long time, I suppose, because there's things out there that'll eat them and that dappled light sort of help. So it would seem that the jungle carpet pythons, or what we call jungle carpet pythons, that phenotype is repeated where you have rainforest.

Yeah. And I think, honestly, that's kind of what changed my thinking in regards to jungle carpets was seeing a carpet python on Mount Glorious or, you know, kind of heading up there. And, I mean, it, you know, had the same bold pattern, black and yellow, as you would expect from a jungle carpet. So, you know, I can see that shared phenotype based on habitat. And I think we see that fairly consistently. It could be somewhat of a false equivalency if you're only going by phenotype or you're only going by genotype. You know, you could say, well, they look the same, so they're the same thing. And green trees look very similar to each other, but they're very, you know, diverse.

And, you know, we've got two species. So to continue that on, because I only got all of that up in this case. It goes to the measure, though, right? Sorry, what was that? It goes to the measure. I mean, what are your measures for what you're – like, obviously, like carpet pythons, you know, jungle carpet pythons, they have a food partitioning.

They're niche food partitioned with scrub pythons, right? But they're still the same thing genetically right that's kind of what we're saying so it's not a difference really it's it's a it's a it's it's where they fit in in the habitat that they occupy right yeah yeah i wouldn't say they're genetically different from the the coastal carpets that you find further west um in that area but sorry so scott can proceed with his point there yeah sorry so to continue up there so we've continued from the south and southern part of the range and we've gone gone further north now in Australia it's the you know southern hemisphere is obviously the the opposite to the

northern hemisphere the further north you go the further the warmer it becomes okay so we've gone from animals that live that that are dark in colour, really dark in colour, basically to absorb sunlight, and as you go further north, they become consistently lighter. And so you go from an animal that's almost all black with yellow spots or white spots in a diamond python, as you go further north and you get up to Savannah, into the Savannah country of northern Cape York Peninsula and then across under the Gulf across to the Northern Territory

and then into WA, the carpet pythons are living in Savannah for the most part. And so they're pale yellow, orange, red, whites, and they're relatively small um but they basically occupy this this color this this they've got this northern coloration form i suppose if you will and you see that on cape york you see those animals from you know archer river as far down as cooktown um these these carpet pythons are cool you know the animals around black are indistinguishable from uh from what you would call a darwin carpet you know or or

or what do they call you can't call them i and ijs anymore we're calling them new guinea carpets in the new guinea carpets papuans the island you know whatever and they're found on new guinea so that's right that's what i'm going with but they were found in australia as well they're found on cape york peninsula they look identical they don't look any different so to suggest that there are different different taxon is you know not i don't think that's accurate um we we definitely reject Harrisona. So I suppose basically across the northeast of Australia and then down the east coast, you have one highly ranging species. And it's probably the best way to describe it is what people use the concept of a ring species or a ring species concept.

So a ring species concept, do you know what a ring species concept is or not yeah yeah so from birds mainly from salamanders in california where they show you know there's the species migrate around a barrier you know be it a high mountain top or something like that as they move around the barrier and eventually come back in contact with kind of the population that started. The population that ends and the population that started can't breed with each other, but they can kind of breed with populations around the ring. Correct. And so essentially what we're looking at in carpet pythons

is we're looking at a ring that's two-thirds of the way around in that it runs across the top of Australia into southern New Guinea or across Soil. If we want to use Soil, it's probably a better description because at the end of the day, the seas are only there now as opposed to when they were originally there. Across the southern part of Soil and then down the east coast of Australia.

And so, yes, the carpet pythons at Eden or Mallacouda or can river i.e diamond pythons look radically different to the animals from the top end i'm not suggesting that they don't i'm not understanding i'm not suggesting that there wouldn't be a little bit of genetic divergence between those two populations sure at the end of the day there's there is an explanation as to why they look so different now as a as an example for that, we look at something that has a distribution that almost identically marries carpet pythons that we don't have much of an argument in regards to whether or not they should be a whole heap

of different species is blue-tongued skinks. The legal skin coitus has almost an identical distribution to carpet pythons. And yet we do not see any subspecies that are widely recognised within skin coitus as opposed with the exception of evanescence from the key islands in New Guinea that was described by Shea and intermedia. But where Intermedia start and stop is also a really weird amalgamation,

and that tends to happen in far north Queensland. So you would think that animals that live in similar habitats that have similar pressures would probably evolve at a similar rate. And I struggle to tell the difference between carpet pythons across a lot of much of northeastern new south wales through to queensland and be able to confidently assign an animal to that location so i you know i i agree with you in a lot of respects here. And I think, you know, that's, that's a good line of thinking and that, yeah, they all came from a common ancestor. Now, I guess the, the ideas is as they move and, you know, obviously Imbricata and, and Breda Lee kind of got stuck or, or I marooned.

Right. And, and I was talking to Nick about this and and he was talking about the last glacial maximum. And he told me just because there was more land showing, that doesn't necessarily mean that Australia was wetter. Australia was actually drier during the last glacial maximum than it is now. And so they were perhaps more isolated and allowed to kind of be on a different evolutionary trajectory. And, you know, species moving around, you know, I wanted to, you mentioned

that earlier, and I wanted to kind of hit on that a little bit. Now, carpet pythons tend to kind of move along rivers and through trees, and that's a very integral habitat for carpet pythons in general, is tree-lined watercourses. Now, where the watercourses flow will depend on where the trees are. And so it makes sense that, you know, trees and carpet pythons go hand in hand. And so if you've got a river that was once flowing one way, kind of like the, I was listening to a researcher, he was talking, it was on the Aussie Wildlife Show, talking about inland carpet pythons and his research there. And there was a river that used to flow between the area,

the Gammons and Flinders, that area down into what's that So that was the Diamantina River used to flow down through that area and then that would flow into the Darling around Cunnamulla and it then flows from the Darling then joins around I think it's in western New South Wales around around Wilcannia, where it joins into the Murray. And so that flow was disrupted or altered in some way, and it kind of stopped that flow, right?

So you've got a marooning maybe of those carpet pythons that are up north of, you know, in you know, in the gammon ranges and north of there. So, um, and, you know, I, I think that that is the, the heart of this, I guess, is, is how long do you need to be separated and how long do you need to be marooned to, to become another species and how deep to the divergences? I mean, what we're looking at is a snapshot, right? And that could, that could all change. Also, you know, there's some, I got to thinking about human interference. I mean, when people populate an area, they generally plant trees, which would allow carpets to maybe flow across areas that previous to that, they don't flow, right? In the first edition of the carpet book, we talked a lot about the Black Mountain Corridor and that biogeographical barrier there, and that some indication of

genetic analysis of carpets above and below the Black Mountain Corridor have, you know, differences or they show some separation. And so, you know, extending that to other barriers throughout Australia, um, could, you know, play a, play a role in telling the story of how carpets, you know, got to where they are and how, um, they're isolated from different populations that may be close. Now there are some, um, so there's, there's also a, a biogeographical barrier called the Laura basin, uh, biogeographical barrier. That's, uh, kind of, uh, below Cohen kind of where, you know, below the McElwraith and iron ranges there. And it's a, it's a fairly broad, uh, barrier and it's, and it's a barrier, not just to reptiles, but also to, you know,

mammals and other things. And so you see, yeah, exactly. You see, you see separation of things above and below that. And that kind of seems where, you know, there's, there's a, there's a dearth of records of carpet pythons within that area. You don't, you see, you know, maybe 150 kilometer gap in, in records in that area. Now that's not a very highly sampled area, I'd say. And it's not easy to get around in there. There's very limited roads and things like that. So it's hard to say, you know, if that's the true vision of it, but. There's a collection bias to areas that are easily like heightened. Exactly. Did you say dearth? Did you say dearth?

What is a dearth? I'm not familiar with dearth. A lack or a low amount. All right. See, folks, I learned something today. There we go. Sorry. You learned more than just the definition.

No, I know. I was being facetious. So anyway, you know, there's all these biogeographical barriers. And wouldn't you know it, they correspond with the breaks that Sea of Aglia is showing. And it corresponds to some extent with what we would call this or that or the other. The animals in the Iron Range that look like Darwin carpets and the animals in PNG that look very similar to those, they all fit genetically together. Hang on a second.

We can't say that because they specifically don't do that. What do you mean? If you're saying that the range at Cohen splits the animals from the animals that are south of that, right right then cape tribulation is well and truly south of cohen morocco and port morseby is well and the micklewraith is well and truly north of cohen yeah so that gap does not work i mean maybe not not completely or wholesale you know but there there is uh they're kind of maybe um fitting somewhat intermediately i you know it's it's it's not a like a not a distinct line that says here's here's where it is and there

could be some some flow that occurred uh at some point you're not talking about a line we're talking about yeah in that in that particular case we're talking about 800 kilometers pretty big area that we're talking yeah yeah but i guess i mean the the concept though of of these biogeographical barriers corresponding somewhat to the breaks now the the sea of aglia group actually extends that below you know cohen and down into, uh, down to the black mountain corridor. So they say everything North of the black mountain corridor, including New Guinea and Darwin kind of grouped together and they're, um, genetically similar. Um, and so I guess, yeah. Yeah. So what about the animals? What about the animals South of that? So if they're different from, you know, between north of the Black Mountain Corridor and south of the Black Mountain

Corridor, what are we calling those? So in my mind. Within coastal carpets, though, they've got six samples in that paper that are south of the Black Mountain Corridor, right? You have four of them, sorry, three of them. So Mackay, Townsville, and Tully. They sit in between the two populations of what we call the McCarthy.

And that's where I'm going, yeah. And then they have two samples, right, in being Capira and Brisbane that fit within Coastal. And that's where I'm going with that. So you've got, yeah, I mean, it's not a great sampling and, but it does line up nicely with, with different biogeographical barriers. Right. So if you go south of the. I mean, none of that sampling is awesome. Right. We're not, we're not talking, we're not talking about definitive numbers. When you talk about awesome sampling, like no, no papers really have awesome sampling. Right. That's what I'm saying.

It gives you some indication, but it's not. To rely, the sampling is anecdotal almost. Not necessarily. Better than nothing, but certainly not conclusive to anything. I wouldn't say it's anecdotal that's where i'm sort of going with it is that the sampling is better than is much better than nothing but at the same time if we use mcdowell i as mcdowell is is currently thought of me right we can only argue about what we can argue about at the moment, Justin. Sure, sure.

Let's go with that, right? I'll go there. If we use McDowell Eye as it is at the moment, it sits within both McCarthy and Veragata. So Veragata, McCarthycdowell all of those things are the same thing according to the genetics on this paper unless you were to to dive down um split them a different way or split them different way and that's kind of what i'm i'm arguing is that the way they split them doesn't make any sense and i think we're in agreement there because that's kind of what you just

said, you know, and, and I would agree. And, and the, so, um, you know, the, the thinking that I've got going now and, you know, who, who knows, it is that you, you go on the genetics, you go on the biogeography and then you can go on, you know, phenotype to a lesser extent. Carpet pythons are highly variable. And so, you know, like we were talking about, you can see something that looks just like a jungle, you know, very, very far away from where you would find a jungle. And so a lot of, I think carpets in their, you know, common ancestor probably had, you know, a wide variety of looks.

And so depending on where they're living, they can kind of adapt and blend in and develop a certain phenotype based on which ones don't get picked off and which ones go on to breed, you know, because they blend in better with their backgrounds a dark black and yellow snake blends in better in the dappled light of the forest whereas a straw colored brown snake blends in better with you know drier savannah type and you probably have environmental factors like you know temperature and things like that at play as well which will affect how they they color to maybe absorb or not absorb you know thermal insulation better or worse like i think there's a lot of a lot of things going on there yeah yeah yeah so i suppose i suppose too because there is all of this these things going on and it does seem to be a little bit arbitrary about the way we selected this stuff this is where we utilise something out of birds as opposed to,

and bird people use this a lot as, you know, I'm not a birdo by any special imagination. Avian reptiles are not my thing. However, you know, they have this beautiful thing that they refer to as races and races are an interesting concept in that it's an an interest specific category that sits below a subspecies that allows somebody to take a geographical variant or a phenotype and apply a name to it okay now it doesn't it's not a taxonomic name.

It doesn't have any nomenclature or standing, but it allows people to clearly define a particular race or a particular phenotype, all right? So in the case of, you know, when we relate that back to reptile husbandry, that allows people to have a race of carpet pythons that is highly contrasting and it might be black and white or black and yellow and they happen to live in the rainforest okay so that would be you know we we call them jungle carpets now the three of us have all got an idea in our

heads of what a jungle carpet python looks like all right yeah but to actually quantify what that that carpet look what that looks like and why that jungle looks like this but that coastal that has a similar pattern and if you were to write it down describes almost identically it doesn't fit yeah and so this is where the term race is actually a nice way to use it. And that is why we use the term race in the book as opposed to using a nomenclature point when the genetics obviously needs more work, all right, when the specific definitions via the descriptions of those particular species has a lot of inference,

and so because it couldn't clearly be understood genetically and it couldn't clearly be understood from a nomenclature point of view as the descriptions, we then opted to go with race. And so, yeah, we threw another thing in the mix, which sort of confused people with a little bit just a few people but at the same time it does fit quite well and it's the same thing you can apply that to blue tongues as well you can go oh that's a blue tongue from east of the great dividing range from the southern part of this range that's a northeast Queensland blue

tongue that's a blue tongue for kimberly or you can do that with shingleback skinks. Or you can do that with Cunningham skinks. You can do that with all of these things. And you can actually maintain captive populations. We have Cunningham skinks. We have Sydney sandstone form. We have granite belt animals. We used to have the woodland forms.

We used to have the southern Victorian forms we used to have the southern victorian forms and we used to keep them all separate they're all cunningham skin some of them have got subspecies some of them have got names that have been applied to them that haven't been accepted by the wider community but we get them as separate esus or races and this is something scott that you would say like like we are into like locality uh animals here right and so for us like maybe what you're saying is a race has much more applicability than a locality would yeah yeah correct now somebody hates jungles do you get to call him a racist that's the question that was not even the greatest dad joke but i suppose though let's let's use that with with scrub partners right and you know we can we can use that with scrubbies and say you know we're going're going to go the animals from Yamdina in the Key Island group versus the animals

from Tanambar. Even though they're both Norta, you may want to retain those and keep those either as localities or keep them as races. It might be that this is the Tanambar race or this is the Yamdina race or, you know, your green pythons from Iron Range versus the animals from the port of Merauke or whatever. So you can do that. You can keep that partitioning, but you're not then making

an assumption as to whether they should be different species or not. And we see that a lot in children's pythons and spotted pythons and stimson's pythons um mount carbine cape york you see where i'm going with this you know the the pygmy band the people i would say those pygmy band is there's not much uh doubt in my mind there's something different than a stimson's or or a Spotted or a Children's. Yeah. Yeah. Scale count wise, morphologically, you know. But in the interim until something's published, by using a race, applying a race or applying a race gives a little bit more, excuse me, applies a little bit more sort of structure, I suppose, to just the locality. Yeah. And I mean, I think that's what this is circling around is how do you structure it? And what we're saying is what is biologically significant, right? And if you identify

something that's biologically significant, then you apply a term to that animal, be it race or subspecies or whatnot. And so I think, you know, the current construction of what we think of as a grouping, like say McDowell is off, and it probably could be divided into several different subspecies, races, whatever you want to call them. Um, and, and, you know, depending on who's doing the work gets to decide if they're a subspecies or a race or a species or whatever, you know, if we go by Wells and Wellington, we've got, uh, Shaniai and, and, uh, McDowell and, and Metcalfe, but, you know, based on the current best information. Yeah, exactly. And I'd go back to maybe in regards to diamonds being something

somewhat different. If you go back to the Sea of Aglia data, they're grouped with Bradley, right? So you're thinking Bradley? Well, I'm not saying that they're Bradley and there is a fairly, you know, a node between the two. They're separated by something, right? And so I'm just saying that indicates that their genetics are quite a bit different than the other. Why didn't they group with the coastals? You know, why didn't they group with the things that we think they're the same as, or you think they're the same as? Because they potentially use two, two,

they only use two genes. Two, two regions, right? So that, yeah, they used, uh, parts, parts of two different genes. Yeah. So, um, yeah. And, and, and would. And would a different analysis show a completely different thing? Probably. Potentially. Yeah. And I mean, you can look at thousands of genes that would put them identical with everything else, but it's the genes that change quickly and the genes that maybe offer more insight into what's going on. Now, I think diamonds have evolved into different niches or nippers. I don't know if you caught that from one of our last episodes,

but we're a nipper through such a fit about the way people said niche that we decided to call it a nipper. Some people say niche. Yeah, niche is now a nipper. It's done. It's done. Yeah. so anyway um you know you can have a cup of say in hot not telling the beckle so so you know they're they've uh diverged enough um you know in in in the way that they live you you know, and the, the cold tolerance or whatnot. And, um, their,

their phenotype, um, pattern is, is fairly unique among carpets. You don't see that in different, uh, localities or, or races. And so, you know, and there, there, um, there have been historically biogeographical barriers between the areas where diamonds are found and the rest of the carpets and also the fact that there is an intergrade zone you know where you do see kind of a uh intermediate form between diamonds and coastals where you know they come into contact tells me that you know that's probably something different or something, you know, at least the McDowell or whatever subspecies is different in that regard rather than just a race. So I don't quite follow.

I don't understand where you're going with that. If diamond pythons were different to McDowell, you should not see any gene flow between those two populations. See, that's where I disagree. I think we're applying different species concepts. I think that there can be gene flow between separate species. And I'd go back to saying, you know, womas and ball pythons can breed and produce offspring.

The womas and ball pythons naturally don't come into contact with each other either. That's true. That's true. So then you say they, you know, to suggest that because womas and ball pythons can be put in a box together and breed. No, the point is that just because an animal can breed with each other doesn't make it the same species is what I'm saying. So just because a coastal and a diamond can breed together doesn't mean it's the same species.

Just because gene flow occurs doesn't make it the same species. There can be hybrids and intergrades of naturally occurring and and well-documented species but they need to maintain still some level of partitioning within that space and i think they do i mean you only see those integrates within a certain area in in australia you told me how how wide is that so sorry 150 kilometers 500 kilometers so with idea of, of Northern ranging coastals and Southern ranging, you know, diamonds being something different than those integrate zone, you know diamond kind of coastal whatever's is that,

is that kind of what you're saying, Justin, is that, is that kind of the gist? Yeah, but there, that there is an integrate zone or whatever is, is kind of the point of that. But, but, but that, that clearly those thatist? Yeah, that there is an intergrade zone or whatever is kind of the point of that, I guess. But that clearly those, you know, that McDowell and Spoloda Spoloda have complete gene flow, right? And they have an intergrade zone. But are we saying that in, you know, the northern range of coastals and the southern range of, you know of diamond pythons could potentially be something different. That's why I'm trying to...

Yeah, I mean, well, and again, it goes back to biogeographical barriers. You did have a biogeographical barrier between what you would call a diamond python and what you would call a McDowellite occurred in the past. There was a... I'm not recalling the name of it. And we've got a lot of detail in the second edition of the complete carpet. I'll be very interested. Because I can't think of anything that has that distribution patent in Australia. And that's the, that's the problem is that, or that's what I referred to as the human factor where that's the most densely populated area of Australia and you have a lot of interruptions maybe into those biogeographical barriers. We only have a snapshot after things have been developed and trees have interrupted those

barriers. And so you're talking about human population or, you know, human cities being potential, potential, you know, genetic flow barriers. No, no bridges to genetic barriers. Okay. Oh, I see. I see. Where they couldn't cross before, they can cross after people develop those areas. So you're suggesting that, you're suggesting in the last 230 years that we have provided bridges for, for carpet pythons to reintegrate with each other? Potentially. Potentially. That's, that's an idea that's, you know, floating around. A hypothesis? Yeah, it's a hypothesis that has some support, I guess you'd say. I'll be very interested in writing the support for that one.

Yeah, and I guess that's the problem. We probably should have this show after the book was put out so we could hear. Because I don't want to give away too much, but, you know, the different biogeographical barriers, different other biotic factors come into account, or abiotic factors, rather. So I'll touch on, you know, anthropogenic movement of species, I suppose, if you will. It's probably the best way to describe it regards to carpet python so carpet pythons have a long history certainly in australia of when people

were farming they would use carpet pythons as rat control in their farm sheds right so that farmer would come across a carpet python he'd take it to his shed, stick it in the shed, and that would hopefully control the rats and mice. Now, when that farmer sold up and he moved from one part of New South Wales or Queensland to another part of New South Wales or Queensland, he'd go and catch Barry the carpet python and he would then take it with him and release it in his new shed. Okay? Now, he effectively translocate things around.

There's a reasonable history of that going on. And the fact that carpets adapt very well to human interruption. You know, if they're planting trees, you'll find carpets very close to human habitation. I mean, if you got an an addict you can find him in there yeah i mean what yeah carpoportons live in every second house in in yeah so you know exactly and you go out bush and it's a little harder to to find yeah i found more carpet i think we're up to 16 or 17 different individual carpet pythons

that have cruised through our backyard in the 10 years that we've been living. So, you know, it's nuts. But I suppose the point that I'm making is that there is some evidence of people moving animals around, but that doesn't necessarily demonstrate that they're going to cause a speciation event or anything like that. What I'm talking about is I'm not seeing any amalgamation

or separation between the animals that in the intergrade zone, for lack of a better term, between Spallota and McDowell. I don't see it. I don't see it. And I've caught a shitload of carpet pythons slash diamond pythons in that part of the world over the years and seen a hell of a lot of them, and I don't see the difference. Now, I'm not saying that because I don't see it doesn't mean it's not there.

But what I'd like to do or what I'd like to understand is what you guys are saying that I'm not. No, I mean, I agree with you, and that's been a bit of a frustration is to get kind of that delimitation of where the, you know, intergrade zone exists. But I guess what, you know, back to the Sea of Aglia paper, I look at that and I say, there's some differences in genetics, whether it's two genes or whatnot. There still is some indication that they're fairly divergent from other carpet pythons. right i mean phenotypically if we're if you're talking phenotypically i would probably go 100

with what scott's saying because he's probably looked at way more of them than you know any either of us have could possibly see right but if you're talking genetically i mean i i don't know how you know how well that's been studied you know i i'm just you know that's kind of what's leading my thoughts in that regard is that the this genetic analysis the the you know i i'm just you know that's kind of what's leading my thoughts in that regard is that the this genetic analysis the you know for better or worse the best one we have at this point shows that diamonds have a fairly divergent genotype and that they are brittle that they're readily or they're they align closely so what you're saying is that readily should be sunk into spallata that's what you're telling us right now.

If you're going to use it, hang on. What I'm going to say is you've got to use it both ways, right? Well, no, no, no,

because I'm, I'm saying genetics aren't everything, but there's something right. So there is an indication of differences. That's why you have eyes. Cause if you, well, no,

if you look at the genetics and that's all you look at, then you would say, yeah, they're the same thing. But if you have eyes and you know where they live, then you can say, no, genetics aren't everything. It's something, but it's not everything. So yeah, they're divergent from other carpets, but are they readily? Of course not. Is there any gene flow between them and readily? Of course not. So why are they so aligned? Why are they so separated from other carpets? the divergence of those genes over time. Right. And maybe not all genes diverge at the same rate, not the measure or so, you know, it is again, you know, clearly it says what it says and that is something, but maybe not the whole story. Is that fair to say? I mean, and so part of a measure, but maybe not the whole measure. It's all in good fun to debate yeah for sure but you know but i would say there's

some indication that diamonds are a little different than other carpets if brettly are different than other carpets then diamonds are a little bit different too in that same way not saying that they're the same thing or they you know they have gene flow but they are they're different so if if that was the case then you would be sinking you would retain the name mcdowell and sink mccaffey into mcdowell why would why would that well actually you sink them all into shane on because shane is the oldest name well and in okay so i'll go back to... So if we go with that, if we're suggesting that all of the... Diamonds are a distinct species and that Britalia is a distinct species,

then the animals that include what is known as McCaffey, Cheney, and McDowell, I should go to the oldest available name. All right. The oldest available name for all of those by page priority is Cheney. So then McDowell goes, McCaffey goes. I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion from what I'm seeing. I lost you there. So you've got to use page priority of the earliest available name for that node.

Yeah. Okay. So the earliest available, the highest thing on the page, really a Shane I came before, really a McDowell I. Okay. All right. And McCaffrey was described in 1985 versus the other ones described in 83. So the oldest available name for that group would be Shani.

So you're saying if Belota are different species than the carpets to the north, then you'd have to apply. The name would be Shaney, not McDowell. I not met half. I, if they're all, if they all form one, sorry, well, very God, actually very God. Yeah. Very God is always very God.

So very God is the oldest. So they would all become very God. And, and, you know, that wouldn't be beyond the realm of belief for me. I mean, if they all became subspecies of variegata, I'm cool with that, you know, to some extent. Which is back to what we used to have. Yeah. We used to have all those variegata. And then you could mine time the rice McCaffey and the rice jungle and the rice McDally within Variegata, which is what we originally argued, is that they should all be rices. significant term you want to apply doesn't bother me but you know uh subspecies race you know i

guess depending on who's doing the taxonomy and who's describing them you know so but yeah definitely a a puzzle or a you know taxonomic conundrum here um so and i think this is why we see we do see people that sort of go well there a, there's a bit of an issue here, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And it definitely requires some further scientific, you know, all the stuff that we include in the book is just our musings based on, uh, you know, all the, all the information that we're gathering together being fans of carpet pythons, but that's only hypotheses or ideas and anybody can take that and, you know, delve into the scientific aspect of it. And, you know, we're having a taxonomist Warren Booth analyze samples and, you know, try to put our hat in the ring in that regard, you know, bringing him on as a, as an actual taxonomist. So I still need to talk to him and see,

see what's going on. That's, that's kind of what we're waiting for along with the, you know, photo layout of the book is, is that genetic analysis and where we see things lying. But did you just say that Warren Booth is holding up the carpet book? With the photo layout? Wow. Everyone's like, Oh, we want that carpet book. Now it's like, Warren, let's go. I will say that you're giving us a new IPI, getting us an IPI. That's great.

And, you know, granted, he's being held up by the people who are running the genetic samples. So it's not his fault. No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. You're trying to throw Warren under the bus, aren't you? No, i'm not i'm not i'm not i'm not trying you're trying to throw warren under the bus aren't you no i'm not no i am not i didn't hear that i didn't hear that i didn't hear that at all what i heard was that that both chuck and i think that warren is doing a great service to making sure that he's actually being

diligent in making his thing. Are you suggesting that he's not, Justin? Once again, my co-host goes against me. Judgments are crap judgments. I'm not going against you. Listen, I make my own statements.

I make my own statements. I cannot help, sir, how you interpret them. What is this? I lose all these coin tosses, and now I'm driving buses for a living? What the hell? All right. Well, Warren, you're a good man, and we appreciate your work. That's what I'm saying. I think that's what's what i'm saying i think that's what we're

all saying he's being warned yeah that's what we're going to close on we're going to suggest that warren is a great bloke that's what i can agree yeah well this has been a great discussion it has been a great discussion um i i i know that uh the the aussies typically don't like Americans sticking their nose where it doesn't belong and Aussie snakes. I disagree. I appreciate your – I'm glad to hear that because, you know, I appreciate the discussion and the, you know, the camaraderie that we feel from you. I don't get that sense from you at all. Yeah. that sense from you at all so look i suppose and you know our position and i'll sort of close on this isn't it our position to utilize the position of races as opposed to making subspecific

determinations in regards to carpet python was based on the the shallowness of the the genetic divergence in the populations and based on the how willing the various phenotypes are to interbreed with each other and that the diagnoses of the various species subspecies, was not the best, I suppose, and that there was a lot of inference that could be made. And rather than making a whole heap of inferences, we decided to err on the side of caution and suggest that there's some partitioning, there's some divergence there, but that more work needs to be done to actually apply

either specific or subspecific names to those particular groups. And once that work is completed, then we might change our position completely as to where these things sit. And I think we need to be willing to accept that there is always going to be change with greater amounts of evidence. And that greater amount of evidence may suggest that things are species or it might actually change our opinion of that and actually make them races

or subspecies or or just color variants who knows well once again dang it scott we we agree on you know more than we should be uh agreeing i guess in a fight club but no i i agree with you that yeah i i think um more work needs to be done and that we we don't have the the best picture at the current time there there needs to be done and that we, we don't have the best picture at the current time. There, there needs to be a lot of, uh, restructuring, uh, potentially, or, or just referring to things as races. I think that's reasonable. You know, I don't think that's beyond the realm of, of reality. So, um, thanks for, uh, for coming on and for, for this lively discussion. It was really enjoyable and I had a good time. I think this is one of our longer episodes too, which is not a surprise.

I knew that would probably be the case having Scott on. Well, I can talk on the water with a mouthful of models. I probably fall into that category as well. It's definitely a great discussion and hopefully our listener got something out of this and could, you know, maybe formulate their own opinion. And, you know, it had this idea of what carpet pythons were based on, you know, maybe the Barker book and based on some lineages that we had in the United States. And actually going over to Australia and seeing things in the wild or gathering photos from a specific area, you see that, you know, the rules and the ideas that we had about these things were completely off. And, you know, and maybe that's the case now with the subspecies. Well, most likely is the case with the subspecies as they are now. And, you know, more work needs to be done. But I think it's a good encouragement to get out there and herp, you know, look at stuff in the wild, see stuff in your backyard even.

I mean, getting down to Arizona was a blast and to see some species that I hadn't seen before, you know, just a thrill to be able to experience something new. And, you know, the more you do it, the more you can learn and the more you can grow and develop different ideas and hypotheses. But what a fun area to spend time thinking about. So thanks for having a discussion. Yeah, definitely. If you're not enjoying it, if it's slogging through this stuff, you know, if you can't look at some of these papers and it you know just kind of goes over my head or i don't i don't get it so i don't get that excited about it but this stuff gets me pretty

pumped up so thanks for coming on scott though go ahead the one thing i think too i hate the term lumper and splitter and i'll tell you why right because uh-, you know, at times I'm a lumper and at times I'm a splitter. But the thoughts there is where you should try and use, try and be led by the evidence as opposed to making a position that everyone's always going to lump or everyone's always going to split. I think people should be open to the thought that things could be split, but then they should also be lumped together and not everything should be lumped and not everything should be split. Fair enough. Yeah. I guess I've been guilty of that. I think I was the one that said

lumper and split earlier on and thought of Steve Dinellon as a, as a lumper, but I probably should take that back. Yeah. So yeah, good stuff, man. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate you being here. Thanks Coach. Anything else, Chuck? No.

Anything to add? This was fantastic. I enjoyed the ride. Thank you. Even though I was driving the bus, I enjoyed the ride. You didn't even need to split us up or tell us to calm down. No, you guys were great. I didn't even need to be here.

Actually, I was on mute telling my cattle dog to shut up because it was over here just yapping away, man. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for listening to Reptile Fight Club. We'll be with you again next week. And until then, keep the fight going. Catch you next time, carpet kids. Nå er det en av de fleste som har kastet seg på denne vegen. Thank you. Bye.