Ornate Eagle Ray Artificial Selection

            The trait I am selecting for is more offspring per litter. Each Ornate Eagle Ray can have up to four offspring already, so to do the selection process I will take females that have came from a litter of four, and take males that have came from a litter of four, then mate them. After that I will take the ones that have the most offspring and mate them with offspring from other litters of four. I would continue this process for 100 generations, careful not to mate siblings or cousins, until every Ornate Ray that has come from my process bares 4 offspring each. I chose to select this trait because the Ornate Ray is endangered and this would aid in population growth. Unfortunately, the age of sexual maturity and the gestation period is not known for the Ornate Eagle Ray (14), but the Spotted Eagle Ray (a close relative) reaches sexual maturity at age 3, and its gestation period is 4 months (16), so for 100 generations to occur, it would take 333 years and approximately 4 months. The look of the ray won't change much, because the change that's going to happen is going to be internal, but I would assume that to carry more offspring the Ornate Ray would need to grow larger than before.

Ornate Eagle Ray

Mottled Eagle Ray

The scientific name of the Ornate Eagle Ray is Aetomylaeus vespertilio.

One of the closely related species is the Banded Eagle ray (Aetomylaeus nichofii) (9). The Banded Eagle Ray lives in the Indian Ocean and western and northwestern parts of the Pacific Ocean (12), it feeds on worms, crustaceans, snails, and bony fish. Another closely related species is the Mottled Eagle Ray (Aetomylaeus maculatus) (9). The Mottled Eagle Ray lives in the eastern parts of the Indian Ocean, the western and central parts of the Pacific Ocean and the north parts of the Pacific. The dietary composition is unknown for this species (13), but I would assume they would eat worms, crustaceans and bony fish, considering most other Eagle Rays eat those.

Locations of the Ornate Eagle Ray (15)

The Ornate Eagle Ray lives in the Indian ocean and the western coasts of the pacific ocean (10), it usually lives close to the ocean floor in fairly shallow waters. What the Ornate Eagle ray eats is currently not known but what the Spotted Eagle Ray (a species much more common) eats is mollusks and crustaceans such as clams, shrimp, oysters, octopus, squids, sea urchins and also bony fish (11), I would assume the Ornate Eagle Ray has a fairly similar diet, meaning that the Ray has a fairly broad niche. The eagle ray is more of a generalist because it has a wide diet and lives in different places. There are many reasons why the Eagle Ray is endangered. The Ornate Eagle Ray appears to be naturally uncommon and is rarely observed. That combined with the threat the Ornate Eagle Ray faces from a variety of inshore demersal fisheries (14) is the reason that the Ornate Eagle Ray is endangered. If the Ornate Ray went extinct I don't think much would be affected, because it is so rare in nature already. Although the populations of some of the foods the ray eats might increase, I don't think that the increase would be dramatic because the foods that the Eagle ray eats has other predators. A good zoo habitat for this ray would be a large warm water aquarium that is fairly shallow with many crustaceans and worms. Other fish could also be in this habitat as they will not affect the Ornate Eagle ray.