Heavily exploited but poorly known: systematics and biogeography of commercially harvested pythons ( Python curtus group) in Southeast Asia

More than 100 000 blood pythons (brongersmai) and short-tailed pythons (curtus and breitensteini) are taken from Borneo and Sumatra each year for the commercial leather trade. Traditionally, all have been treated as a single polytypic species (Python curtus), with three subspecies differing in colour, size and geographic distribution. Analyses of DNA sequences and morphological data clarify the phylogenetic relationships, taxonomy and biogeography of this group. The lineage is monophyletic, and each of the three subspecies differs from the other two both morphologically and genetically. Given the morphological and genetic distinctiveness of each taxon, we here elevate the three subspecies to full species status. Python brongersmai is the most distinctive in terms of colour (of the three, only brongersmai has colour-morphs that are red or orange), size (it grows to 2.6 m, vs. approx. 2.0 m for the other taxa), and scalation (e.g. brongersmai has >166 ventral scales, vs.