I spoke to Donellan some months ago about the abstract, the reason the paper was never published is because it is part of a larger PhD study that is ongoing. There will be three or four papers published eventually, the first being a PhD thesis, the last being the one we want on the
spilota complex. The reason it will be the last published is because it refers back to findings in the previous papers and thesis (so they have to be published first).
In a nutshell, they took samples from a large number of wild carpet pythons of all the different subspecies as well as
bredli and
imbricata and then analysed them using a variety of taxonomic tools (electrophoresis, microsatellites, chain sequences etc.).
The results were that
bredli and
imbricata were clearly and significantly distinguishable from the others to state they are separate species. However, there were no significant differences in the genetics of the different subspecies of spilota. There were no autopomorphies. I asked about genetic markers being more prevalent in some subspecies or populations, and I was told that all the amrkers were found in all the animals. Some were more prevalent in certain populations than others, especially towards the centre of the range, but none were exclusive and - most importantly - bore no resemblance whatsoever to phenotype. Looking at the genetics of an individual could not predict what the skin pattern would be.
Therefore, genetically there are no subspecies in
Morelia spilota. The colour patterns we are familiar with and use to identify Coastals, Jungles, Darwins, Diamonds, MDs etc. are just simply locality populations.
At least, this is what one of the senior researchers on the team told me.
Hix