67 urn:lsid:arphahub.com:pub:0EB7B745-BA33-591F-8755-8E4C5B0D1E08 urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:46D8CEF4-19D6-4C04-A352-F60839BA3C4F Check List CheckList 1809-127X Pensoft Publishers 10.15560/22.4.667 199089 Notes on Geographic Distribution Animalia Carcharhinidae Carcharhiniformes Chondrichthyes Chordata Elasmobranchii Pisces Vertebrata Asia Malaysia Sabah First eDNA-based record of Carcharhinus melanopterus (Quoy & Gaimard, 1824) (Carcharhiniformes, Carcharhinidae) from Mantanani Island, Sabah, Malaysia Chen Cheng Ann chengann@ums.edu.my https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9168-1910 1 Conceptualization Writing - original draft Writing - review and editing Data curation Formal analysis Investigation Methodology Ng Wei-Ling https://orcid.org/0009-0003-8626-8840 1 Writing - review and editing Data curation Formal analysis Joseph Juanita https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6995-7973 1 Investigation Resources Ng Abdullah Muhamad Arif 2 Investigation Resources Kajita Tadashi https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1232-4179 3 Writing - review and editing Data curation Formal analysis Institut Marin Borneo, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia Institut Marin Borneo, Universiti Malaysia Sabah Kota Kinabalu Malaysia https://ror.org/040v70252 JSK Mantanani Island Resorts, Pulau Mantanani Besar, Kota Belud, Malaysia JSK Mantanani Island Resorts, Pulau Mantanani Besar Kota Belud Malaysia Iriomote Station, Tropical Biosphere Research Center, University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan Iriomote Station, Tropical Biosphere Research Center, University of the Ryukyus Okinawa Japan https://ror.org/02z1n9q24

Corresponding author: Cheng Ann Chen (chengann@ums.edu.my).

Academic editor: Paramasivam Kodeeswaran

 2026 24 07 2026 22 4 667 679 952DDA90-441A-5088-A503-83FB83EE87D9 09 05 2026 09 07 2026 Cheng Ann Chen, Wei-Ling Ng, Juanita Joseph, Muhamad Arif Ng Abdullah, Tadashi Kajita This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The first molecular occurrence record of the Blacktip Reef Shark, Carcharhinus melanopterus (Quoy & Gaimard, 1824), is documented from Mantanani Island, Sabah, Malaysia, based on environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding. Surface seawater collected from two seagrass sites on 9 May 2024 and analyzed using MiFish 12S rRNA primers. A single 155-bp operational taxonomic unit matching C. melanopterus with 100% identity to MitoFish reference sequences was recovered exclusively from one of the sampled sites (20,881 reads). No reads were detected at the other site or in negative controls. Sequence data are deposited in NCBI SRA (BioProject PRJNA1460790).