Neotype designation and re-description of Forsskål’s reticulate whipray Himantura uarnak
Type
Article
KAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionDivision of Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering, Red Sea Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia.
Environmental Science and Engineering Program
Marine Science Program
Red Sea Research Center (RSRC)
Reef Ecology Lab
Date
2021-03-17Submitted Date
2020-10-21Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/665804Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
A continuing impediment to the taxonomy of the reticulate whipray Himantura spp. species complex is the absence of a type specimen for H. uarnak (Gmelin [ex Forsskål], 1789). Here, reticulate whipray specimens were sampled from the Jeddah region in the Red Sea, the assumed type locality of H. uarnak, and characterized genetically at the cytochrome-oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) locus. One of these specimens now in the fish collection of the California Academy of Sciences was designated as neotype. The maximum-likelihood phylogeny of all available CO1 gene sequences from the genus Himantura had the following topology: ((H. leoparda, H. uarnak), (H. undulata, (Himantura sp. 2, (H. australis + Himantura sp. 1))), H. tutul), where H. uarnak haplotypes formed a distinct lineage sister to H. leoparda. Based on these CO1 gene sequences, the geographic distribution of H. uarnak includes the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the East African coast, and the Arabian Sea. At least one lineage in the reticulate whipray species complex remains to be named.Citation
Borsa, P., Williams, C. T., McIvor, A. J., Hoareau, T. B., & Berumen, M. L. (2021). Neotype designation and re-description of Forsskål’s reticulate whipray Himantura uarnak. Marine Biodiversity, 51(2). doi:10.1007/s12526-021-01180-1Sponsors
Foremost, thanks are due to M. Tietbohl for donating tissue samples, assisting in field collections, and providing laboratory assistance. Additionally, we are grateful to J. Spaet and members of KAUST’s Reef Ecology Lab for their support at various stages of this project; to D. Catania and L.A. Rocha for allocating a CAS collection number to the neotype of H. uarnak; to X. Chen for sharing reticulate whipray sequences; to M. Bennett-Smith for sharing excellent photographs; to S. Bogorodsky, H. Debelius, and R. Fricke for insightful discussions about the taxonomy and nomenclature of reticulate whiprays; to G. Lim (ICZN) for confirming the validity of the present neotype designation. Useful taxonomic literature was communicated to us by C.-W. Chang, K.-N. Shen, and an anonymous reviewer. Several books including P. Forsskål’s Descriptiones animalium, J.F. Gmelin’s Systema naturae, and Rüppell’s Fische des rothen Meeres were accessed from the Biodiversity Heritage Library website (http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/).Support to this study was provided by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) through baseline funding to MLB and Institut de recherche pour le développement, Marseille to PB.
Publisher
Springer NatureJournal
Marine BiodiversityAdditional Links
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12526-021-01180-1Scopus Count
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Archived with thanks to Marine Biodiversity