Bowmouth Guitarfish - Taxonomy and Phylogeny

Taxonomy and Phylogeny

German naturalists Marcus Elieser Bloch and Johann Gottlob Schneider originally described the bowmouth guitarfish in their 1801 Systema Ichthyologiae, based on a 51 cm (20 in) long specimen collected from off the Coromandel Coast of India, which has since been lost. In his 1990 phylogenetic study, Kiyonori Nishida concluded that Rhina and Rhynchobatus are the sister clade to all other batoids except for the sawfishes. John McEachran and Neil Aschliman (2004) found that, based on morphological characters, Rhina is the most basal member of the Rajiformes. Systematists have variously classified the bowmouth guitarfish with the family Rhinobatidae (which was polyphyletic prior to recent revisions), Rhynchobatidae, or in its own family; the last was the arrangement recognized by Joseph Nelson in Fishes of the World (4th edition, 2006), as it has phylogenetic support.