Conus furvoides                (Gabb, 1873)

Conus furvoides  brachys (Pilsbry & Johnson, 1917)

 

Description ⁽²⁾:

 

Shell elongately turbinated, narrow, nearly or quite smooth, striated in some cases anteriorly by a few wavy lines ; spire acuminate but not very elevated; the first whorls elevated and sloping on the top, acute-angulated ; the later whorls more or less deeply channeled and sometimes striated on top. Aperture linear. Color pattern unknown.

About the size of C. furvus, Rve., and similar in the form of the body whorl. The spire, however, is much lower and the tops of whorls are markedly grooved in all the specimens I have seen. An unusually broad specimen before me is not unlike a very narrow example of C. monilis, which it also resembles in the concave sides of its spire

 

Coloration pattern ⁽¹⁾

Two weakly interacting patterns (one complex, one simple) present; it is not clear which pattern is primary. The more complex pattern consists of axially arranged markings that extend from the base to shoulder and onto the sutural ramp. These markings may also cover broader areas of the last whorl, forming unpigmented axial or diagonal blotches. PRI 67240 (Fig. 20D) shows evidence of the temporary cessation of the complex pigmentation field (though not necessarily cessation of shell production) in the direction of growth, followed by its later resumption, resulting in oppositely-patterned regions that appear like puzzle pieces that might fit together. The simpler pattern consists of at least 12–17 spiral rows of dots (the extent of this pattern on the anterior third of the last whorl is not known). Interaction between the two coloration patterns occurs when the spiral dots intersect the margins of the axial patterns; this results in the formation of small, triangular shaped blotches. The two patterns do not differ in the color of emitted light. The complex last whorl pattern extends over the shoulder onto the sutural ramp.

Remarks ⁽¹⁾

Conus furvoides has cannot be easily confused with co-occurring fossil species. It does, however, shares similarities in shell form with some extant members of the subgenus Dauciconus Cotton, 1945 (sensu [2]) (Tucker and Tenorio [34] assigned C. furvoides to Dauciconus, although at the genus level).

Some specimens of C. (Dauciconus) virgatus Reeve, 1849, an eastern Pacific species, exhibit the puzzle-piece like arrangement of axial streaks described above (e.g., http://www.gastropods.com/9/Shell_769.shtml), while some specimens of C. (Dauciconus) recurvus Broderip and Sowerby, 1833—an eastern Pacific species that is the sister taxon of C. virgatus [1]—show evidence of diagonal blotches (e.g.,http://www.coneshell.net/pages/c_recurvus.htm). Neither C. virgatus, nor C. recurvus, however, show evidence of rows of spiral dots on the last whorl, which are observed in C. furvoides. Conus furvoides is also similar in shell shape to C. villepinii Fischer and Bernardi, 1857, an extant western Atlantic species also assigned by Puillandre et al. [2] to the subgenus Dauciconus. The coloration pattern of C. furvoides, however, differs substantially from the specimens of C. villepinii figured by Kohn [8]; in particular, the last whorl coloration pattern of C. villepinii—which consists of two discontinuous spiral bands, resulting in axial streaks—is not present in C. furvoides.