Endangered
Raja radula
Raja radula
Raja radula is a shark or ray in the family Rajidae (order Rajiformes), recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
In juveniles and males, these rough spinules are only on the snout and the lower half of the tail. There are two thorns between the dorsal fins. The subcircular body has a short, curved snout, anterior edges are convex and the extremities are angular wings.
Introduction The rough ray is a Mediterranean ray species of the Rajidae family described by Delaroche in 1809.
Range and habitat
Raja radula is a benthic species native to the Mediterranean Sea. This species inhabits coastal areas, between 2 and 300m depth on sandy or muddy bottoms of the continental shelf.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Their diet consists mainly of benthic animals, such as crustaceans, teleosts, and mollusks. Indeed, their main prey are crustaceans, such as decapods or amphipods, and the second are teleosts.
It was found that diet remained relatively similar between individuals of different sexes, even so, the size of the individual led R. Radula to move from the consumption of crustaceans to teleosts. The smaller individuals have a diet dominated by crustaceans as the medium size individuals.
In crisis
Even if this species is not exploited or traded commercially, it is classified as Endangered (EN) according to the IUCN Red List. Indeed, the greatest threat to this species is the by-catch in demersal trawl, gillnet, trammel net, bottom longline, and purse seine fisheries. This bycatch occurs when fishing for cuttlefish, spiny lobster, red mullet, grouper, and Sparidae mainly.
Raja radula is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Raja radula, Wikidata item Q5653471. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
