Neotrygon indica Pavan-Kumar, Kumar & Borsa, 2017

Fernando, Daniel, Bown, Rosalind M. K., Tanna, Akshay, Gobiraj, Ramajeyam, Ralicki, Hannah, Jockusch, Elizabeth L., Ebert, David A., Jensen, Kirsten & Caira, Janine N., 2019, New insights into the identities of the elasmobranch fauna of Sri Lanka, Zootaxa 4585 (2), pp. 201-238 : 213-214

Neotrygon indica Pavan-Kumar, Kumar & Borsa

( Figs. 2E , 9A, B )

In total, seven specimens of Neotrygon Castelnau were examined. These came from a landing site in Pukulam (SL- 11) in the North Western Province, fish markets in Kottadi (SL-23, SL-24, and SL-25), Erinchamman Kovilady (SL-47), and Vankalai (SL-67) in the Northern Province, and the landing site in Mutur (SL-72) in the Eastern Province. These specimens formed a tight cluster in the tree resulting from the Neighbor-Joining analysis. They differed from one another by 0–10 bp. They clustered most closely with our reference specimen of the species referred to as Neotrygon kuhlii 3 by Naylor et al. (2012a). However, they differed from that specimen by 20–25 bp, suggesting that the Sri Lankan specimens may represent a distinct species. Although NADH2 data are not available for the recently described Neotrygon indica , the specimens from Sri Lanka are morphologically consistent with the description of that species of Pavan-Kumar et al. (2018). Further supporting these findings is the fact that two of our specimens were landed at fish markets or landing sites adjacent to the Gulf of Mannar—the body of water in which the type locality of N. indica is also found (i.e., the Inico Nagar, Tuticorin fish landing centre [9.12°N, 79.46°E] in India; Pavan-Kumar et al. 2018). A voucher specimen of this species was deposited in the BRT Ichthyology Collection (SL-67; BRT-I 0016).

This is likely the species referred to as Dasyatis kuhlii (Müller & Henle) in Sri Lanka ( De Bruin et al. 1995; Morón et al. 1998; De Silva 2006)—a taxon now assigned to the genus Neotrygon (see Last & White 2008) and known to belong to a species complex that includes several new regionally distributed species ( Borsa et al. 2016, 2018; Last et al. 2016c; Borsa 2017b; Pavan-Kumar et al. 2018). This is the first formal report of N. indica from Sri Lanka.

Figures

FIGURE 2. Neighbor-Joining trees of p-distances based on 1,044 bp of aligned NADH2 sequence data for individual batoid genera or groups of genera. Taxon names are followed by country, host specimen number (in parentheses), and GenBank number. Outgroup taxa used in each analysis were omitted from the individual trees. Scale bar values indicate substitutions per site. Specimens deposited in the Blue Resources Trust Ichthyology Collection are indicted by stars (see text for details). A. Aetobatus (Aetobatidae). B. Brevitrygon (Dasyatidae). C. Himantura (Dasyatidae). D. Maculabatis (Dasyatidae). E. Neotrygon (Dasyatidae). F. Pastinachus (Dasyatidae). G. Pateobatis (Dasyatidae). H. Urogymnus (Dasyatidae).

FIGURE 9. Neotrygon indica (A–B) and Pastinachus ater (C–E) (Dasyatidae). A. Dorsal surface of mature male (SL-72). B. Dorsal surface of female (SL-24). C. Dorsal surface of mature male (SL-39). D. Scapular denticles of mature male (SL-39). E. Oronasal region of mature male (SL-39).