Laos stingray
| Laos stingray | ||||||||||||
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Laos stingray ( Hemitrygon laosensis ) |
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| Hemitrygon laosensis | ||||||||||||
| ( Roberts & Karnasuta , 1987) |
The Laos stingray ( Hemitrygon laosensis ) is a species of stingray and lives in the Mae Nam Chao Phraya and Mekong rivers in Thailand and Laos .
features
The ray species has an oval pectoral fin disc that is slightly longer than it is wide. It reaches widths of up to 62 cm with a maximum weight of 30 kg. The tip of the snout protrudes slightly over the disc towards the front. The eyes are small, followed by slightly larger injection holes. The tail is whip-like and about twice as long as the disc is wide. On the top of the tail it has one, rarely two, poisonous sting. The top is brown, the underside pale, with large, irregular yellow-orange spots and an orange-red border.
Way of life
The Laos stingray mostly lives close to the sandy bottom in the Mekong and Chao Phraya, presumably in separate populations. There it feeds on bottom-dwelling invertebrates . It is ovoviviparous with litters of probably no more than one young. It is often as by-catch in the purse seine fishery on bony fish introduced and freshly marketed for human consumption. Because of the heavy fishing of its habitat, dam construction and water pollution from industry and agriculture, it is classified as EN (endangered) by the IUCN .
Systematics
The ray species was described in 1841 by the ichthyologists Tyson R. Roberts and Jaranthada Karnasuta under the scientific name Dasyatis laosensis . When the Dasyatidae was revised in mid-2016 , the species was placed in the genus Hemitrygon .
Individual evidence
- ↑ 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
Web links
- Laos stingrays on Fishbase.org (English)
- Laos stingrays on the IUCN Red List