Endangered
Mangrove whipray
Urogymnus granulatus
Mangrove whipray, also called Coachwhip Ray, is a stingray in the family Dasyatidae (order Myliobatiformes) — Urogymnus granulatus, recorded as Endangered and tied to Australia, Maldives, and India.
Appearance
The anterior margins of the disc are nearly straight and converge at a broad angle on the snout tip. The teeth are arranged in a quincunx pattern and number 40–50 rows in the upper jaw and 38–50 rows in the lower jaw. There are five pairs of gill slits beneath the disc.
Range and habitat
Although uncommon, the mangrove whipray seems to be widely distributed in the Indo-Pacific. It has been reported from the Red Sea, South Asia among them the Maldives and the Andaman Islands, the Gulf of Thailand, the Malay Archipelago (except Sumatra), New Guinea and northern Australia, and various islands among them Guam, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and Micronesia. This bottom-dwelling species typically inhabits shallow water close to shore, though adults have also been recorded offshore to at least a depth of 85 m (279 ft). Juvenile rays frequent brackish habitats such as mangroves and estuaries.
GBIF currently lists 604 occurrence points. Those points follow where people logged the taxon — museum drawers and surveys included — not a closed range boundary.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Unlike many of its relatives, the mangrove whipray is reportedly solitary in nature. It is relatively inactive during the day, often resting half-buried in sand or atop coral heads, and actively forages for food at night.
The electroreceptive ampullae of Lorenzini of this species have a sensitivity of 4 nV/cm and an effective range of 25 cm (10 in), enabling it to locate buried prey. Juveniles feed mainly on small crustaceans, among them prawns and crabs.
In crisis
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed it as Vulnerable globally and as Endangered in Southeast Asia, where its population has declined substantially due to intensive artisanal and commercial fisheries as well as widespread habitat degradation.
Mangrove whipray 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 Mangrove whipray, Wikidata item Q28926118 and GBIF occurrence geography. 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.
