Aspidoboa Sauvage, 1884

Schleip, Wulf D. & O'Shea, Mark, 2010, Annotated checklist of the recent and extinct pythons (Serpentes, Pythonidae), with notes on nomenclature, taxonomy, and distribution, ZooKeys 66, pp. 29-80 : 38

Genus Aspidoboa Sauvage, 1884 [synonym of Python]

Remarks:

Hoser (2004) resurrected this genus to include the species of the Python curtus complex (sensu Keogh et al. 2001). As demonstrated by Rawlings et al. (2008) after exclusion of the taxa reticulatus and timoriensis (see Broghammerus ), the genus Python forms a monophyletic grouping, including the taxon brongersmai. Since Keogh et al. (2001) demonstrated that brongersmai is the sister taxon to curtus and breitensteini, separating these three taxa from the genus Python would result in the non-monophyly of the genus. It is our opinion that the recognition of Aspidoboa at subgeneric rank only causes confusion and is unnecessary in a low-diversity genus as Python .