Australasian Fishes Project acknowledged in Noisy Stingray paper

If you cast your mind back 4 years you may recall a journal post called Rays gettin' some Rays. The page included a stunning photo (above left) taken by Javier Delgado Esteban (above right) that shows three Mangrove Whiprays in shallow water at Magnetic Island. Also included in the post was a link to a video in which a clicking sound made by a ray is clearly audible.

Javier initially posted an image of the rays on Instagram where it was seen by Australasian Fishes Project member Lachlan Fetterplace (below right).

After 4 years and some impressive work Lachlan and co-authors have written a fascinating paper about sound production in wild stingrays in which they acknowledge the Australasian Fishes Project.

The authors state, "While it is clear that elasmobranchs can hear and many can also respond to sound in various ways, hearing capacity is not necessarily linked to the ability to produce acoustic sound (Mélotte et al. 2018), and until now there has been limited evidence to suggest that any elasmobranchs have the ability to actively produce sound themselves."

"Here we present the first records of voluntary active sound production in the wild by three individuals of two species of stingray: the mangrove whipray Urogymnus granulatus and the cowtail stingray Pastinachus ater. "

"The sounds recorded from all three individuals were characterised by a series of very short, broadband clicks and were associated with movement of the spiracles and cranial area. In all recorded observations, the ray commenced producing sounds in response to an observer approaching closely, and ceased sound production when the distance between the ray and observer increased. "

"We suggest hypotheses for the potential purposes and mechanisms of the sound production, and highlight that further research into this ability is needed."

I'm not sure how researchers will conduct research into the mechanism of sound production in stingrays, but however it is done, I look forward to reading about it and maybe writing another update.

Reference

Mélotte, G., Parmentier, E., Michel, C., Herrel, A. & Boyle, K. Hearing capacities and morphology of the auditory system in Serrasalmidae (Teleostei: Otophysi), Scientific Reports 8, 1 (2018).