Lets talk about Stingray Identification

[Miles]

I am just curious where everyone has gathered their opinions on how to identify stingrays?

I am personally admitting right now that I don't think I know nearly as much as I used too.. I am more confused now than ever. I have theories about hybrids occuring in the wild, creating new 'species' which are actually nothing new at all... there are so many morphs and variants of potamotrygon it's crazy.

I believe that their is alot of confusion about rays, from a number of different reasons. Some books and resources are more accurate than others, I just wonder how they got their ID's if their is no 100% positive resource for identification. I understand that tail structure, stinger placement, eye placement, and a number of other things are what defines the different species, however is their any definitive information that distinguishes the variants within the species?

I have gathered most of my knowledge of species variants from MFK, some asian stingray books, some american stingray books, importing from Peru and talking with my peruvian exporter..

Each source has contradicting opinions..

Is Aqualog the end-all identification book, because I have a very thorough asian stingray book that has differing identifications..



Where does everyone gather their resources?

What do you look at to ID a ray?

 

[rayman]

Hi Miles,

I've come to the point that in most cases you need a picture of a ray to know what ray it is. Names do often confuse. The Aqualog was a nice try as long as it goes with Rosa 1985. But in the Aqualog are some presumptions that leed to new confusion (for example P. menchacai, P. yepezi, P. histrix, P. reticulata). The rays in our tanks we know as P. scobina are now named as P. orbignyi by some scientist.
In Peru was not much scientific work on rays so the confusion there is bigger than in Brazil. But even in Brazil where much work on rays was done during the last years no new species was described since 1985 (Plesiotrygon iwamae).

If you read some new scientific stuff from Brazil you see all and everywhere some P. sp. or P. cf. because even scientist often did not know which species they work on. Be prepared what Dr. Getulio Rincon will show from his work at Rio Tocantins, a very nice P. sp. A lives there.

I think there is no chance for years to have the right species name for almost half the freshwater ray species in South America.

 

[najiru]

I think my ideas are from a combination. Firstly the big ones; pearls, tigers, motoro, histrix, leos, henlei have come from books. Almost everything else I have got from websites either in forum discussion or from regular sites.

I agree though that I am also getting more confused the more time goes on!!
N

 

[Miles]

Hi Miles,

I've come to the point that in most cases you need a picture of a ray to know what ray it is. Names do often confuse. The Aqualog was a nice try as long as it goes with Rosa 1985. But in the Aqualog are some presumptions that leed to new confusion (for example P. menchacai, P. yepezi, P. histrix, P. reticulata). The rays in our tanks we know as P. scobina are now named as P. orbignyi by some scientist.
In Peru was not much scientific work on rays so the confusion there is bigger than in Brazil. But even in Brazil where much work on rays was done during the last years no new species was described since 1985 (Plesiotrygon iwamae).

If you read some new scientific stuff from Brazil you see all and everywhere some P. sp. or P. cf. because even scientist often did not know which species they work on. Be prepared what Dr. Getulio Rincon will show from his work at Rio Tocantins, a very nice P. sp. A lives there.

I think there is no chance for years to have the right species name for almost half the freshwater ray species in South America.

Great insight! It does seem that the Peruvian exporters have alot of confusion.. Many of the fish lists are passed around, and many of the 'common' names are used widely for many species.

I have had conversations with my exporter, who is often confused himself when he receives shipments from Iquitos. If the collectors in Iquitos fail to properly label the boxes, distinguishing the rays, it's up to the exporter to re-classify them and know what they are..

The more the rays change hands, the more chance for error.

Perhaps there is more confusion from Peru because their is less distinctive species like black rays, and more abundance of brown morphed rays.. Perhaps the tributaries work differently, allowing for more wild hybridization in Peru..

Good stuff here, Lets get the Synposium Conversations started early!

 

[mshuangchao]

I reckon that most "weird-looking unkown" rays fall into the category of the more well known species. They are very likely just geographical morphs. Take the P.motoro for example, there's the "Chain motoro", "Marble motoro","Brazilian motoro"...and they all are P.motoro. Not only Stingrays but Aros too: The Green, Red, RTG, Cross-Back all fall in the category of S.formosus. Just my point of view!

 

[Nic]

i kinda rely a lil too much on the aqualog book... there is soo much i dont know and im still learning... most species i see on this bored are pretty easy to id but i question myself from time to time..... there are so many varients so many different rays its hard to know everything

 

[csx4236]

Hi Miles,

I've come to the point that in most cases you need a picture of a ray to know what ray it is. Names do often confuse. The Aqualog was a nice try as long as it goes with Rosa 1985. But in the Aqualog are some presumptions that leed to new confusion (for example P. menchacai, P. yepezi, P. histrix, P. reticulata). The rays in our tanks we know as P. scobina are now named as P. orbignyi by some scientist.
In Peru was not much scientific work on rays so the confusion there is bigger than in Brazil. But even in Brazil where much work on rays was done during the last years no new species was described since 1985 (Plesiotrygon iwamae).

If you read some new scientific stuff from Brazil you see all and everywhere some P. sp. or P. cf. because even scientist often did not know which species they work on. Be prepared what Dr. Getulio Rincon will show from his work at Rio Tocantins, a very nice P. sp. A lives there.

I think there is no chance for years to have the right species name for almost half the freshwater ray species in South America.

Agreed

 

[Miles]

 

[davo]

I reckon that most "weird-looking unkown" rays fall into the category of the more well known species. They are very likely just geographical morphs. Take the P.motoro for example, there's the "Chain motoro", "Marble motoro","Brazilian motoro"...and they all are P.motoro. Not only Stingrays but Aros too: The Green, Red, RTG, Cross-Back all fall in the category of S.formosus. Just my point of view!

I agree there are probably a lot of morphs of pattern and colour within species that are just locale based as opposed to seperate species.

 

[Miles]

So what would we call this ray?