#rhinobatidae

[herpsandbirds]

Common Guitarfish (Rhinobatos rhinobatos), family Rhinobatidae, order Rhinopristiformes, found int he North Atlantic

CRITICALLY ENDANGERED.

photography by Johan Fredrickson

[terranlifeform]

Eastern fiddler ray (Trygonorrhina fasciata) eye in Manly, Australia

Sylke Rohrlach

[todropscience]

NEW SPECIES ALERT: MEET THE SPADENOSE GUITARFISH

From the Gulf of California, and apparently only found there, this new species of guitarfish, named Spadenose Guitarfish (Pseudobatos buthi) is based on the description of 82 specimens. This new species is dituinguished by having a smaller body than other local guitarfish, an uniform coloration, as well a longer snout, and is found in shallow waters. The spaddlefish went unnoticed until today, probably was misidentified with the peckled guitarfish (Pseudobatos glaucostigmus), a simmilar looking guitarfish inhabiting the same area.

-  Male Spadenose Guitarfish. Photo by Kelsi M. Rutledge.

Researcher Kelsi Rutledge, who described this new species, made an incredible photoshoot with her new species of guitarfish, to share its discovery using Twitter. According to her words, “no fishes were harmed in the making of this photoshoot! This is a preserved museum specimen that I took to the beach. It was not alive”. The same fish it was deposited in  Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

- Kelsi and the spadenose Guitarfish. Photo by Kelsi M. Rutledge

Photo: Kelsi Rutledge

Reference:  Rutledge, 2019.  A New Guitarfish of the Genus Pseudobatos (Batoidea: Rhinobatidae) with Key to the Guitarfishes of the Gulf of California. Copeia.

[terranlifeform]

Eastern fiddler ray (Trygonorrhina fasciata) at Jervis Bay in Australia

Sylke Rohrlach

[todropscience]

Meet Ranong Guitarfish (Rhinobatos ranongensis), a new species of guitarfish from the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal, in northern Indian Ocean. 

Last et al., 2019. Description of Rhinobatos ranongensis sp. nov. (Rhinopristiformes: Rhinobatidae) from the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal with a review of its northern Indian Ocean congeners

[howstrangethemusicsoundstome]

I love him T_T

[drhoz]

#1566 - Trygonorrhina fasciata - Southern Fiddler Ray

AKA banjo shark, fiddler ray, green skate, magpie fiddler ray, and parrit.

The two fiddler rays are Australian endemics in the Rhinobatidae family (guitarfishes and shovelnose rays), with anatomical features from both sharks and true skates. The head and the pectoral fins are fused into a flat, rounded body, similar to the related shovelnose rays. Unlike the better-known stinrays, they lack a venomous spine in the tail, but do have a row of thorn-like denticles along their back.  

They are opportunistic bottom feeders eating a wide variety of fish and invertebrates.

Female southern fiddler rays grow to almost twice the size of the males, 150cm vs. 90cm, and can delay the development of embryos until the young can be born when food is plentiful and ocean temperatures are high and conducive to rapid growth. They birth 4 to 6 young per breeding cycle, after a gestation of 4 to 5 months.

During the day they stay buried in the soft substrate in very shallow coastal waters in estuaries and seagrass beds in southern Australia from Lancelin, WA to Victoria, but they’ve also been caught in water 50 metres deep.

[dailyelasmobranch]

Southern fiddler ray - Trygonorrhina fasciata

Also called the banjo shark, fiddler rays are a genus of guitarfish. Southern fiddler rays are found along the southern coast of Australia in depths from the intertidal zone down to almost 600ft, and can reach over 4ft in length. Their blunt teeth enable them to crush the bottom-dwelling invertebrates they feed on. Like other guitarfish they are ovoviviparous, meaning that the embryos develop inside eggs carried inside the mother until they are ready to hatch.