Neotype designation and re-description of Forsskål's reticulate whipray Himantura uarnak

Abstract

A serious impediment to the taxonomy of the reticulate whipray Himantura spp. species complex has been the absence of a type specimen for P. Forsskals H. uarnak. Here, reticulate whipray specimens were sampled from the Jeddah region, 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 in San Francisco was designated as neotype. A 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 sub-clade 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. Two lineages in the reticulate whipray species complex remain to be named.