New iEcology records and range extension for the clown wedgefish Rhynchobatus cooki

Abstract

The clown wedgefish Rhynchobatus cooki (Last, Kyne & Compagno, 2016) is a recently described and threatened species whose geographic range is solely known from six records reported in 2020. An emerging and cost-effective methodology to locate range records of cryptic and data-poor animal taxa is iEcology, wherein social media posts and other online content are searched to locate sightings of target species. The authors employed regular iEcology searches over a period of 18 months to locate additional range records, with such effort yielding 11 new records for the clown wedgefish, with four landings in Dabo, Singkep Island, five landings in Merbau, Merbau Island, and two landings in Bengkalis, Bengkalis Island. Seven of these new records extend the identified geographic range for the species to islands of the Meranti and Bengkalis Regencies in the Riau Province of Sumatra, Indonesia. Such results affirm the utility of social media and other online searches to locate range records for cryptic and data-poor taxa.