Taxonomy and Phylogeny
American zoologist Samuel Garman described the broad stingray in a 1880 issue of the scientific journal Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, giving it the name Trygon lata from the Latin word for "broad". Subsequent authors synonymized Trygon with Dasyatis. The type specimen was collected from what were then called the "Sandwich Islands", and measures 52 cm (20 in) across.
Lisa Rosenberger's 2001 phylogenetic analysis of 14 Dasyatis species, based on morphological characters, found that the sister species of the broad stingray is the roughtail stingray (D. centroura), and that they form a clade with the southern stingray (D. americana) and the longtail stingray (D. longa). As D. centroura is found in the Atlantic, this suggests that it and D. lata evolutionarily diverged before or with the formation of the Isthmus of Panama (c. 3 Ma).
Read more about this topic: Broad Stingray