Himantura
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Himantura uarnak , the type species of the genus Himantura |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Himantura | ||||||||||||
| Müller & Henle , 1837 |
The genus Himantura belongs to the family of the sting rays (Dasyatidae). The four species of the genus live in the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean .
features
Himantura species are tall and 1.3 to 1.6 meters wide. Its body disc is strong and sub-oval to rhombic in shape. The tips of the pectoral fins are broadly rounded or angular. The snout has a wide-angled shape. The eyes are small and protruding. The nostrils are surrounded by rock-shaped skin folds. The tail is whip-like and very long. It reaches 2.5 to 3.7 times the width of the body disc. The tail base is narrow and oval to almost circular in cross section. The sting sits near the base of the tail. Dorsal or ventral skin folds are absent. The pelvic fins are small and are almost completely covered by the body disc. The fish have one to three rows of thorns on the neck. Also an indistinct band of thorns on the middle of the spine and a few small thorns on the rest of the body disc. There is no clear row of thorns on the tail, only in adult specimens there are a few small thorns and denticles at the tail end.
The dark back of the Himantura species is clearly patterned with spots, eye spots or net structures. The ventral side is white. In juvenile fish, the rear portion of the tail is usually banded.
Species of the genus Himantura
The genus Himantura originally included more than 20 species from the Indo-Pacific. Most were in a mid-2016 published revision of Dasyatidae some newly introduced species ( Brevitrygon , Fluvitrygon , Maculabatis , Pateobatis ) or Urogymnus assigned. Today only four large species belong to the genus Himantura . One of them is still undescribed. It occurs in the seas around Australasia .
- Himantura australis Last, White & Naylor, 2016
- Himantura leoparda Manjaji-Matsumoto & Last, 2008
- Himantura uarnak (Gmelin, 1789)
- Himantura undulata (Bleeker, 1852)
literature
- Last, PR, Naylor, GJP & Manjaji-Matsumoto, BM (2016): A revised classification of the family Dasyatidae (Chondrichthyes: Myliobatiformes) based on new morphological and molecular insights. Zootaxa , 4139 (3): 345-368. doi: 10.11646 / zootaxa.4139.3.2
Individual evidence
- ↑ load, PR; White, WT; Naylor, G. (2016). Three new stingrays (Myliobatiformes: Dasyatidae) from the Indo – West Pacific. Zootaxa. 4147 (4): 377-402. doi: 10.11646 / zootaxa.4147.4.2.
Web links
- Himantura on Fishbase.org (English)