New stingray species found in Indonesian waters

read moreThe Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) announced on Thursday it had discovered a new species of stingray — the fine-spotted whipray (Himantura tutul) — in four different areas in the Western Indo-Pacific.

Irma Shita Arlyza, a stingray molecular researcher from the LIPI oceanography research center, said she had collected samples from the Java Sea; the Sunda Strait; the waters off Singaraja, North Bali; and waters off the coast of South Java between 2006 and 2008 to analyze the species’ DNA.

Irma and other researchers decided to declare it a new species in 2012 due to the differences found with existing species in the region — the leopard whipray and the reticulate whipray.