A team of researchers from Indonesia, Taiwan and France has described a new whipray species in the family Dasyatidae.

The new species, named Himantura tutul, has been previously confused with other species in the genus, the Leopard Whipray (Himantura leoparda).

Himantura tutul can be recognised by its pattern of leopard-like spots, and its long, thin tail.

The animal measures up to 1.5 m across and 4 m long. It usually has one defensive venomous sting.

The team led by Dr Patrick Berrebi of the ISE-M (Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier) named it after the leopard-like markings on the dorsal surface.

“We chose as epithet of the new species the Malay word tutul, which means ‘spotted’ and which designates the spots of the leopard, Panthera pardus (macan tutul in Malay language),” the biologists explained in a paper reporting the discovery in the journal Comptes Rendus Biologies.

“We propose as the English vernacular name: Fine-spotted Leopard Whipray, to distinguish it from the Leopard Whipray, Himantura leoparda, which has larger spots.”

“The distribution of Himantura tutul comprises the coast of Tanzania in the western Indian Ocean – Pemba Island being the type locality of the new species, the Laccadive Sea, and part of the Indo-Malay archipelago including the Sunda Strait area, the southern coast of Java Island, the Bali Sea, the eastern South China Sea, and the Sulu Sea.”

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Bibliographic information: Philippe Borsa et al. Himantura tutul sp. nov. (Myliobatoidei: Dasyatidae), a new ocellated whipray from the tropical Indo-West Pacific, described from its cytochrome-oxidase I gene sequence. Comptes Rendus Biologies, vol. 336, no. 2, pp. 82–92; doi: 10.1016/j.crvi.2013.01.004