Aetobatus narinari (Euphrasen 1790)

Smith-Vaniz, William F. & Jelks, Howard L., 2014, Marine and inland fishes of St. Croix, U. S. Virgin Islands: an annotated checklist, Zootaxa 3803 (1), pp. 1-120 : 21

Aetobatus narinari (Euphrasen 1790) — Spotted Eagle Ray

Justification: ZMUC P.08719 (1), St. Croix, Feb., 1906; our own observations in addition to REEF (15/20).

Distribution: WA (BD, FL, GOM, BA, GA, VI, WC, nSA, sSA).

Remarks: Beatty (1944:178) noted "small specimens are often seen in the slightly brackish waters of Fairplain Stream."

This species has been considered to have a circumtropical distribution but recent studies using mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data have shown that this species is a complex of at least 2 or 3 species ( White et al., 2010). The species apparently is absent from the Indo-West Pacific and preliminary data suggest that eastern Atlantic and eastern Pacific members of the Aetobat us narinari complex are also probably a different species.