Antaresia
Antaresia is a genus of pythons, nonvenomous snakes in the family Pythonidae. The genus is native to Australasia. The genus is known by the common name Children's pythons, the name of the type species, Antaresia childreni. John Edward Gray named A. childreni in honour of his mentor, John George Children, who was a curator of the zoological collection at the British Museum around that time. It contains the smallest members of the Pythonidae. Four species and two subspecies are recognized, although they were all considered part of the same species until recently. A newly described form called the pygmy banded python may be a distinct species, but analysis has not yet been performed on this animal. The largest recorded examples of Antaresia species have all been males, suggesting males of the known species in this genus may compete for females. This behavior has never been witnessed in the wild, and has only been witnessed in captive specimens.
Geographic range
Species in the genus Antaresia are found in Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, in arid and tropical regions.Species
- ) A taxon author in parentheses indicates that the species was originally described in a genus other than Antaresia.
Taxonomy
The generic name, Antaresia, is taken from the star Antares in the constellation Scorpius. The generic name was created in 1984 by Wells and Wellington in a revision of Children's pythons, those previously described as a single species in the genus Liasis. Despite a petition to suppress the taxonomic work of these authors, it gained wide acceptance and publication in 1991.Four and two subspecies are currently recognized in the genus Antaresia, which is contained by the family Pythonidae; infraspecific ranks have also been described.
A subspecies, A. stimsoni orientalis was described by L.A. Smith, but was not recognized as valid by Barker & Barker. It is now recognized as valid by, as well as A. stimsoni stimsoni.