Reticulated Python

Reticulated Python is a python native to South and Southeast Asia. It is the world's longest snake, and the third heaviest after the green anaconda and Burmese python. The reticulated python received its first scientific description in 1801 by Johann Gottlob Theaenus Schneider, who described two zoological specimens held by the Göttingen Museum in 1801 that differed slightly in colour and pattern as separate species, Boa reticulata and Boa rhombeata. The specific name, reticulatus, is Latin and means 'net-like', or reticulated, and is a reference to the complex color pattern. (Wikipedia, general species account).

The generic name Python was proposed by François Marie Daudin in 1803. Kluge performed a cladistics analysis on morphological characters and recovered the reticulated python lineage as sister to the genus Python, hence not requiring a new generic name in 1993. In a 2004 genetics study using cytochrome b DNA, Robin Lawson and colleagues discovered the reticulated python as sister to Australo-Papuan pythons, rather than Python molurus and relatives. Rawlings and colleagues reanalysed Kluge's morphological data and combined it with genetic material, finding the reticulated clade to be an offshoot of the Australo-Papuan lineage as well. (Wikipedia, general species account).