Taxonomy and Phylogeny
The Atlantic stingray was described by French naturalist Charles Alexandre Lesueur as Trygon sabina, in an 1824 volume of the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He based his account on a damaged male specimen collected by American naturalist Titian Ramsay Peale during the Academy's 1817 expedition to Florida. Since then, various authors have included this species in the obsolete genera Pastinaca, Dasybatus (or the variants Dasibatis and Dasybatis), and Amphotistius, all of which were eventually synonymized with the genus Dasyatis.
A 2001 phylogenetic analysis by Lisa Rosenberger, based on morphology, found that the Atlantic stingray is one of the more basal members of its genus. It is the outgroup to a large clade that contains, amongst others, the southern stingray (D. americana), the roughtail stingray (D. centroura), the longnose stingray (D. guttata), and the pearl stingray (D. margaritella).
Read more about this topic: Atlantic Stingray