The common eagle ray (''Myliobatis aquila'') is a species of

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of ...

in the family Myliobatidae. It inhabits the eastern

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

(

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea, epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

), the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ...

and the south-western

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...

Description

The common eagle ray reaches up to in total length and has a disc width up to .Muus, B., J. G. Nielsen, P. Dahlstrom and B. Nystrom (1999). ''Sea Fish.'' p. 76. It has a rhomboidal disc with a pair of large, triangular pectoral fins projecting on either side, and a single dorsal fin. The snout is rounded and the tail slender, with a large spine at its base but no tail fin. The dorsal surface is brown or black while the ventral surface is white.

Distribution and habitat

This species occurs in the eastern

, including the

, from the British Isles to South Africa, extending to the

. It is also found in the

.Guide of Mediterranean Skates and Rays (Myliobatis aquila). Oct. 2022. Mendez L., Bacquet A. and F. Briand. http://www.ciesm.org/Guide/skatesandrays/Myliobatis aquila It occurs both close to the shore and further out, at depths down to about 800 m, but much of its time is spent in very shallow water at less than 50 m.

Ecology

The species largely feeds on

crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can ...

s and

bivalve molluscs Bivalvia (), in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have laterally compressed bodies enclosed by a shell consisting of two hinged parts. As a group, bival ...

that it excavates from the seabed. Other items in its diet include polychaete worms, gastropod molluscs,

sea pen Sea pens are colonial marine cnidarians belonging to the order Pennatulacea. There are 14 families within the order; 35 extant genera, and it is estimated that of 450 described species, around 200 are valid. Sea pens have a co ...

s and small

. Instead of having pointed teeth, it has flattened hexagonal bars and plates arranged in a mosaic pattern on its jaws; with these, it crushes the shells of its prey. Reproduction is oviviviparous. A clutch of three to seven young develop inside the mother, receiving nourishment at first from their egg yolks, but later from fluids secreted by their mother into her

uterus The uterus (from Latin ''uterus'', plural ''uteri'') or womb () is the organ in the reproductive system of most female mammals, including humans that accommodates the embryonic and fetal development of one or more embryos until birth. The ...

Status

The taxonomic position of this fish is unclear as populations in the Mediterranean Sea may be a different species from those in the southeastern Atlantic. In the

Gulf of Lion The Gulf of Lion or Gulf of Lions (French: ''golfe du Lion'', Spanish: ''golfo de León'', Italian: ''Golfo del Leone'', Occitan: ''golf del/dau Leon'', Catalan: ''golf del Lleó'', Medieval Latin: ''sinus Leonis'', ''mare Leonis'', Classical L ...

in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea, populations declined in the 1970s, and there and elsewhere in the Mediterranean, the fish is under threat from intensive fishing. Along the coast of West Africa it is also the subject of

artisanal fishing Artisanal fishing (or traditional/subsistence fishing) consists of various small-scale, low-technology, low-capital, fishing practices undertaken by individual fishing households (as opposed to commercial fishing). Many of these households are ...

activities but these are less intensive and populations may be steady. The

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of nat ...

to rate it as " critically endangered".

References

External links

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q926676 Myliobatis Fish described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus