I can’t believe what is going on here. A. ocellatus is only the second ray on picmybug, after Mobula alfredi. But the same thing happened to both species.
Remember the mantas? Until 2009 it was thought that Manta birostris was the only species. In 2009 they established M. alfredi as a second species, that was so to say hiding in M. birostris. They look so similar, people wouldn’t see the difference.
Now I’m reading about eagle rays. And take this. Until 2010 it was thought that the spotted eagle ray A. narinari was living around the globe in tropical waters. Only one year after they separated the mantas into two species, they separated the spotted eagle rays into three. There are three different species of spotted eagle rays now. It felt like a déjà vu. Funny coincidence that this happened to both rays I wrote about. Welcome to Punxsutawney, is it Groundhog Day again? I guess you have already seen the movie from 1993?
Back to the fish. A. ocellatus is present in the Indo pacific. A. narinari in the tropical Atlantic, and A. laticeps in the Pacific area.
This separation is not 100% clarified as it seems, but there is strong evidence based on genetic factors. The work is done by White, Last, Naylor, Jensen, and Caira in 2010, and there was a confirmation in 2019.
For the common name, Spotted eagle ray, we would have a challenge here. All three species look pretty much the same, thus people thought they’re all the same species. I’d go for Occelated eagle ray in our case. Another common name is Whitespotted eagle ray. A. laticeps is the Pacific whitespotted eagle ray.
Aetobatus literally means eagle ray, and ocellatus means eye-like spots. You can tell from the picture that the coloration varies, some rays in the group seem darker, and one is even patchy. You often see eagle rays with shorter, or even missing tails, probably from predatory attacks. I saw trigger fish biting a manta’s tail, so it’s not only sharks that bite!
What some divers might not know: Aetobatus belongs to the order Myliobatiformes, stingrays. Like stingrays they have 2 to 6 nasty stinging spines or barbs, and even venom. Of course eagle rays do not harm humans unless they feel threatened. I could not find out how strong eagle ray venom is. I found a barb once, and it had an impressive size.
There has been a very tragic event where a leaping eagle ray killed a woman on a boat in Florida just by terrible chance. Not the spines, nor the venom were involved, the shear impact of a huge ray knocked the woman off her feet, leading to a fatal head injury.
Otherwise there aren’t any accident reports involving eagle rays, probably because they are calm, elegant swimmers, you wouldn’t accidentally step on. I stepped on some confusion though. What I did not know:
There are two families of eagle rays, Aetobatidae and Myliobatidae. White and Naylor created the Aetobatidae in 2016 for Aetobatus, the pelagic eagle rays. Myliobatidae (with the genera Aetomylaeus and Myliobatis) are also called eagle rays. There are roundabout 18 species of other eagle rays, for example the Bat ray Myliobatus californica.
A. ocellatus was described as Myliobatus ocellatus by the German zoologist Heinrich Kuhl in 1823. Mobula kuhlii, the shortfin devil ray, is named after him. He passed away in 1821. His friend Johan Conrad van Hasselt published his work in 1823, the year he passed himself. Both friends seem to have a mixed reputation, being maybe a little to exited, and too little detailed in their work. When you name a species without proper description, you create a nomen nudum. Just a name so to say. When your description is unclear, and the holotype, the actual animal you examined, can’t be found, or lacks important parts, your description is a nomen dubium. It’s a questionable name which cannot be confirmed. Our friends might have created a lot of those. In ‘Inseparable friends in life and death’ by Charles Klaver, the reasons for these circumstances can be found. We’re looking at two guys in their early twenties, who travelled to Indonesia (‘Netherlands East Indies’) 200 years ago, and fell sick during their journey. So sick they literally gave their lives to study nature. They collected thousands of fishes, mammals, reptiles and birds, one of those being the Ocellated eagle ray.
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