The taxonomy of genus Gazella is complex and several different arrangements have been proposed, but several issues remain unresolved. Gazella arabica was originally described from a single specimen: a skin and a skull obtained on the Farasan Islands off the coast of Saudi Arabia (or at least labelled as such). This became something of a mystery taxon and is different from the gazelles currently found there. Bärman et al. (2012) extracted DNA from the type specimen and showed that this was not a single specimen, assigning the skin to G. g. cora and the skull to gazelles of the northern type (G. g. gazella). Wronski et al. (2010) showed that Gazella gazella, in fact, consists of two monophyletic lineages, a northern clade (represented by samples from the Golan Heights) and a southern clade (based on samples from the Arabian Peninsula including the southern Arava Valley), based on mtDNA markers. Lerp et al. (2012) produced similar conclusions using nuclear markers and including samples from Central Israel. A morphological and genetic study of genus Gazella (Bärmann et al. 2013), and a genetic study of gazelles in the southern Levant (Hadas et al. 2015) all further support the existence of two monophyletic lineages: a northern clade (Gazella gazella), and a southern clade (provisionally named G. arabica on the basis that this name takes precedence over cora). This arrangement is now followed by the IUCN SSC Antelope Specialist Group, with G. gazella replacing G. g. gazella in the former arrangement, and the name G. arabica provisionally retained for the southern clade, pending a ruling by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). So G. arabica, as understood here, comprises all the gazelles formerly considered under G. gazella, from the southern Negev through the Arabian Peninsula. Several subspecies have been named under G. gazella and have previously been evaluated for The IUCN Red List: acaciae; in the southern Arava Valley; cora in most of the Arabian Peninsula; farasani on the Farasan Islands; and muscatensis on the Batinah coast of Oman. Genetic research by scientists at King Khaled Wildlife Research Centre (Saudi Arabia) and Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has confirmed the existence of some intraspecific variation, but there is no agreement on the validity of these named subspecies and they are not assessed separately for the time being, until a definitive analysis has been produced. All of the above are included in G. arabica here. The relationship between G. arabica (as here) and two other 'mystery' species, G. erlangeri and G. bilkis awaits confirmation.

Recent revisions of the taxonomy of genus Mobula included the decision to consider the circumglobal Spinetail Devil Ray M. japanica (Müller & Henle, 1841) a junior synonym of the Mediterranean Giant Devil Ray M. mobular (Bonnaterre, 1788), causing M. mobular to become a circumglobal species (Poortvliet et al. 2015, Hosegood et al. 2018, White et al. 2018).Notarbartolo di Sciara et al. (2020) argued that one of the traits that were used to support the differentiation between the two species, the maximum size of M. mobular purportedly in excess of 5 m disc width (DW), can be explained by past misidentifications of M. birostris, and therefore unsubstantiated. This also supports their recommendation to retain for the species the common name Spinetail Devil Ray instead of Giant Devil Ray.