Pythons are marvellous beasts: their lives and ways remain mysterious. We check out a paper that lifts the curtain on a secretive Australian snake –the woma python– what do they do with their time? We also look a little closer at python facultative thermogenesis, what is it, who does it? The Species of the Bi-week is a new multi-coloured snake from high in the cloud forests. FULL REFERENCE LIST AVAILABLE AT: herphighlights.podbean.com

Main Paper References:

Brashears, J., & DeNardo, D. F. (2015). Facultative thermogenesis during brooding is not the norm among pythons. Journal of Comparative Physiology A, 201(8), 817–825. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-015-1025-4

Bruton, M. J. (2013). Arboreality, excavation, and active foraging: novel observations of radiotracked woma pythons Aspidites ramsayi. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, 56(2), 19.

Species of the Bi-Week:

Meneses-Pelayo, E., & Passos, P. (2019). New Polychromatic Species of Atractus (Serpentes: Dipsadidae) from the Eastern Portion of the Colombian Andes. Copeia, 107(2), 250. https://doi.org/10.1643/CH-18-163

Other Mentioned Papers/Studies:

Cantalapiedra, J. L., Aze, T., Cadotte, M. W., Dalla Riva, G. V., Huang, D., Mazel, F., … Mooers, A. Ø. (2019). Conserving evolutionary history does not result in greater diversity over geological time scales. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 286(1904), 20182896. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.2896

Chambers, E. A., & Hillis, D. M. (2019). The Multispecies Coalescent Over-splits Species in the Case of Geographically Widespread Taxa. Systematic Biology, syz042. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syz042

Music:

Intro/outro – Treehouse by Ed Nelson

Other Music – The Passion HiFi, www.thepassionhifi.com