Aerial Imagery Reveals Abnormal Stingray, Taeniura lymma (Myliobatiformes: Dasyatidae), in the Central Red Sea

Ioana Andreea Ciocănaru, Brian Owain Nieuwenhuis, Raquel Lubambo Ostrovski, Jesse E M Cochran, Ashlie J McIvor, Burton H Jones · 2024

Read Aerial Imagery Reveals Abnormal Stingray, Taeniura lymma (Myliobatiformes: Dasyatidae), in the Central Red Sea by Ioana Andreea Ciocănaru, Brian Owain Nieuwenhuis, Raquel Lubambo Ostrovski, Jesse E M Cochran, Ashlie J McIvor, Burton H Jones (2024) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-11631564.txt.

Description

Ioana Ciocănaru and co-authors report an abnormal stingray in the central Red Sea in a 2024 paper. Aerial images showed a bluespotted ribbontail ray with symmetrically deformed rear fins on a coastal sandflat. Such fin deformities from development are rare, though other abnormalities in rays are often reported.

The mirror symmetry points to a genetic base, though without the animal in hand the cause stays uncertain. The ray had still grown well past local maturity size, so the flaw did not block survival. The report is the first of its kind for this species and for this fin pattern. Drone surveys may reveal more such cases.

Catalog record

CREATORIoana Andreea Ciocănaru, Brian Owain Nieuwenhuis, Raquel Lubambo Ostrovski, Jesse E M Cochran, Ashlie J McIvor, Burton H Jones
YEAR2024
COLLECTIONPAPERS
FORMATTXT
FILE SIZE15 KB
VERSION1.0
LICENSECC BY 4.0
RIGHTSCC BY
SOURCEEurope PMC

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC11631564

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