Negaprion acutidens (Rüppell)

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 : 222

Negaprion acutidens (Rüppell)

( Fig. 4A )

The bisected head of a large shark (SL-45) was found in a cooler in the Munai market at Point Pedro in the Northern Province. The owners graciously pieced it back together for us to photograph and also allowed us to remove several muscle tissue samples and both the upper and lower jaws. Portions of the upper and lower jaws have been deposited in the BRT Ichthyology Collection (BRT-I 0013). The specimen was identical in NADH2 sequence to our reference specimen of Negaprion acutidens collected from Australia (AU-17; JQ518644 ). The teeth of the upper and lower jaws are also consistent with those of this species.

This name is in current use for this species in Sri Lanka (see De Silva 1984 –1985, 2006, 2015; De Bruin et al. 1995; Morón et al. 1998). It appears there may be some confusion with the Atlantic member of this genus, Negaprion brevirostris (Poey) , which has also been reported on occasion (e.g., Joseph 1999).

Figures

FIGURE 4. Neighbor-Joining trees of p-distances based on 1,044 bp of aligned NADH2 sequence data for individual selachian 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. Carcharhinus and close relatives (Carcharhinidae). B. Rhizoprionodon (Carcharhinidae). C. Galeocerdidae. D. Hemigaleidae. E. Pseudotriakidae. F. Sphyrnidae. G. Iago (Triakidae).