Maculabatis astra

The black-spotted whipray (Maculabatis astra) is a species of stingray in the family Dasyatidae, found in coastal waters off southern New Guinea and northern Australia. Long thought to be a variant of the related brown whipray (H. toshi), this species has an angular, diamond-shaped pectoral fin disc and a whip-like tail without fin folds. It is characterized by its dorsal color pattern, which consists of a variably extensive covering of small, close-set dark, and sometimes also white, spots on a grayish brown background. In addition, the tail has alternating light and dark saddles past the stinging spine. This species reaches a maximum recorded width of 80 cm. Crustaceans are the main type of food consumed by the black-spotted whipray. It is aplacental viviparous, with females gestating 1–3 young at a time, supplying them with histotroph ("uterine milk"). Most of the black-spotted whipray's range lies within Australian waters, where it faces minimal conservation threats since the widespread deployment of bycatch-reducing measures on commercial trawlers. It is caught in small numbers for meat, skin, and cartilage by Indonesian fishers, as well as by prawn seine fishers off Papua New Guinea. A 2004 assessment of the brown whipray by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which also included data on the black-spotted whipray, listed them under Least Concern.

No narrative description available for this taxon yet.