Glyphis garricki Compagno, White & Last, 2008

White, William T. & Ko’Ou, Alfred, 2018, An annotated checklist of the chondrichthyans of Papua New Guinea, Zootaxa 4411 (1), pp. 1-82 : 38

Glyphis garricki Compagno, White & Last, 2008

Northern River Shark

Glyphis garricki Compagno, White & Last, 2008: 204 , Figs 1 –6. Holotype: CSIRO H 5262-01. Type locality: East Alligator River, Northern Territory, Australia

Local synonymy: Carcharhinus gangeticus - Filewood, 1973: 5 (PNG); Haines, 1979a: 6 (Purari Delta); Haines, 1979b: 6 (Purari Delta). Glyphis species—Kailola, 1987: 18 (“very similar third species” - PNG). Glyphis garricki Compagno et al., 2008: 204 (Baimuru; Port Romilly)—Last & Stevens, 2009: 276 (PNG); Compagno et al., 2010: 41 (Baimuru; Port Romilly); Ebert et al., 2013: 480, pl. 69 (PNG); White et al., 2015a: 1, figs 4 and 6 (Daru; Katatai); White et al., 2018: 164, figs (PNG).

PNG voucher material: (3 spec.) KFRS E.217 (dried jaws), adult male ~ 1500–1700 mm TL , KFRS E.219 (dried jaws), Port Romilly , Gulf Province, 7°33’ S, 144°50’ E, 12 Mar. 1966 ; KFRS E.473 (dried jaws), 1020 mm TL, Baimuru, Gulf Province, 7°33’ S, 144°51’ E, 28 Mar. 1974. In Compagno et al. (2008), the dried jaws above were listed as LWF-E217, LWF-E219, LWF-E473; loaned to LJV Compagno, possibly still in South African Museum in Cape Town .

Remarks: Filewood (1973) included the species C. gangeticus and C. glyphis in his key to PNG sharks and rays which were distinguished from the other Carcharhinus species in have feeble precaudal pits and flattened snouts; longitudinal, shallow precaudal pits is a key distinguishing feature between Glyphis and Carcharhinus species which have a deep crescentic pit. The key characters provided by Filewood (1973) which distinguish his C. gangeticus and C. glyphis were the number of lower teeth (15 pairs vs. 12–14 pairs) and number of precaudal vertebrae (more than 100 vs. less than 100). The number of lower teeth matches G. garricki and G. glyphis but the number of vertebrae is opposite. But, in the couplet for C. glyphis the ‘less’ in “precaudal vertebrae less than 100” has been crossed off and replaced with a> by hand, suggesting an error in the printed version; thus it is likely that the precaudal counts were swapped around for the two species. Dried jaws of G. garricki from the KFRS collection were originally identified as C. gangeticus . Recently recorded by White et al. (2015) from coastal fisheries catches in Western Province where it is caught occasionally.

Figures

FIGURE 1. The current location of the KFRS collection in the biological sciences area of the University of PNG.