India, Oct. 22 -- Florida has a snake problem, and it's hard to see. In 2024, University of Florida researchers reported a new DNA test for four invasive snakes. According to a study in Ecology and Evolution, is built to detect the DNA of Burmese pythons, northern African pythons, boa constrictors, and rainbow boas from environmental samples, and in early controlled tests it picked up Burmese python DNA in both water and soil. The University of Florida news release calls it a pioneering tool for showing where invasive species have been.

Melissa Miller, the lead author and an invasion ecologist at the UF/IFAS Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, says once a nonnative species is established, it is often too late to get rid of it....