Dasyatis Rafinesque

Hugo Ricardo Secioso Santos, Ulisses Leite Gomes & Patricia Charvet-Almeida, 2004, A new species of whiptail stingray of the genus Dasyatis Rafinesque, 1810 from the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean (Chondrichthyes: Myliobatiformes: Dasyatidae)., Zootaxa 492, pp. 1-12 : 1

[[ Dasyatis Rafinesque ]]

The genus Dasyatis Rafinesque, 1810 comprises 37 species and occurs worldwide (Compagno, 1999a,b and Gomes et al. 2000). Six species of Dasyatis have been reported for the southwestern Atlantic (in Brazilian waters): the southern stingray, D. americana Hildebrand & Schroeder, 1928 ; the roughtail stingray, D. centroura (Mitchill, 1815) ; the wingfin stingray, D. geijskesi Boeseman, 1948 ; the longnose stingray D. guttata (Bloch & Schneider, 1801) ; the Brazilian large-eyed stingray, D. marianae Gomes, Rosa & Gadig, 2000 , and the bluntnose stingray, D. say (Lesueur, 1817) . The other dasyatid stingrays known from Brazil are: the pelagic stingray, Pteroplatytrygon violacea (Bonaparte, 1832) and the chupare stingray, Himantura schmardae (Werner, 1904) (Dasyatidae) (Ribeiro, 1907, 1923; Figueiredo, 1977; Charvet-Almeida et. al., 2000, Gomes & Gadig, 2003). The Atlantic stingray D. sabina (Lesueur, 1824) , according to Garman (1913), has been recorded from North Carolina (USA) to Brazil. Bigelow & Schroeder (1953: 376), cited the Brazilian record of this species, referring to it as "... probably not on good evidence". Herein we describe a new species of Dasyatis from Marajó Bay, state of Pará, northern Brazil.