 This slow-reproducing species is threatened by commercial fishing, both targeted and as bycatch, and habitat degradation across much of its range.As a result, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed it as Vulnerable.As "Taeniura meyeni", the round ribbontail ray was described by German biologists Johannes Peter Müller and Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle in their 1841 "Systematische Beschreibung der Plagiostomen", based on two syntypes collected from Mauritius.