"Fueled by bountiful swamps that provide a steady supply of marsh rabbits, deer, wading birds and other meals, Burmese pythons in Florida have rapidly adapted to become hardier and more resistant to cold than their Asian cousins, a new study has found.

And that supercharged evolution should serve as a warning not just for Florida, but the entire U.S.

“We’ve used pythons in southeast Asia to say where they can live in the U.S. Our data doesn’t say they can expand to New York. But our data says holy sh-t, you gotta keep an eye on this,” said co-author Todd Castoe, whose Arlington lab at the University of Texas led the research that examined the swift genetic changes published in the journal Molecular Ecology."

Jenny Staletovich reports for the Miami Herald October 23, 2018. [2]