page_title: Urolophidae
section_title: Biology and ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Urolophidae / Biology and ecology
caption_attribution_description: Sparsely-spotted stingaree (Urolophus paucimaculatus) off Port Phillip.
context_page_description: The Urolophidae are a family of rays in the order Myliobatiformes, commonly known as stingarees or round stingrays. This family formerly included the genera Urobatis and Urotrygon of the Americas, which are presently recognized as forming their own family Urotrygonidae. Stingarees are found in the Indo-Pacific region, with the greatest diversity off Australia. They are sluggish, bottom-dwelling fish that have been recorded from shallow waters close to shore to deep waters over the upper continental slope. Measuring between 15 and 80 cm long, these rays have oval to diamond-shaped pectoral fin discs and relatively short tails that terminate in leaf-shaped caudal fins, and may also have small dorsal fins and lateral skin folds. Most are smooth-skinned, and some have ornate dorsal color patterns.
  Stingarees feed on or near the sea floor, consuming small invertebrates and occasionally bony fishes. They are aplacental viviparous, meaning their embryos emerge from eggs inside the uterus, and are sustained to term first by yolk and later by maternally produced histotroph. As far is known, the gestation period lasts around a year and litter sizes tend to be small.
context_section_description: Stingarees are slow swimmers that can often be found lying still on the bottom, sometimes partly or completely buried in sediment. They are predators of small benthic and burrowing invertebrates such as crustaceans and polychaete worms, and also occasionally small bony fishes. Studies have shown that stingarees that overlap in range differ in their diet composition, which likely serves to reduce competition. For example, off southwestern Australia the masked stingaree (T. personata) and western shovelnose stingaree (T. mucosa) feed mostly on different types of polychaetes, while the sparsely-spotted stingaree (U. paucimaculatus) and lobed stingaree (U. lobatus) feed mostly on different types of crustaceans.
  Like other myliobatiforms, stingarees have a viviparous mode of reproduction in which the embryos hatch within the uterus and are nourished first by yolk, and later by histotroph ("uterine milk") produced by the mother and likely delivered through specialized extensions of the uterine epithelium called "trophonemata". For those species whose life histories have been investigated, the gestation period lasts 10–12 months and the litter size is small, no more than one or two in some cases. The small litter is likely due to the relatively large size of stingaree pups, which measure around half the maximum size at birth.
caption: One of the most common stingarees off southern Australia, the sparsely-spotted stingaree (U. paucimaculatus) feeds mainly on crustaceans.
exif: {}