Conus marmoreus
Encyclopedia
Conus marmoreus, common name
Common name
A common name of a taxon or organism is a name in general use within a community; it is often contrasted with the scientific name for the same organism...

 the "marbled cone", is a species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 of predatory sea snail
Snail
Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

, a marine
Marine (ocean)
Marine is an umbrella term. As an adjective it is usually applicable to things relating to the sea or ocean, such as marine biology, marine ecology and marine geology...

 gastropod mollusk in the family
Family (biology)
In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Conidae, the cone snail
Cone snail
Conidae is a taxonomic family of minute to quite large sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the superfamily Conoidea.The snails within this family are sophisticated predatory animals...

s, cone shells or cones. This is a species which is believed to feed mostly on marine molluscs including other cone snails.

This snail is venomous, like all cone snails. However it is significantly less venomous than other cone snails, especially the fish-eating species, and poses no danger to humans.

There is one subspecies: Conus marmoreus bandanus Lamarck

Distribution

This species occurs in the Indian Ocean along Chagos and Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

, in the Bay of Bengal
Bay of Bengal
The Bay of Bengal , the largest bay in the world, forms the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. It resembles a triangle in shape, and is bordered mostly by the Eastern Coast of India, southern coast of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to the west and Burma and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the...

 along India; in the western part of the Pacific Ocean to Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...

 and the Marshall Islands
Marshall Islands
The Republic of the Marshall Islands , , is a Micronesian nation of atolls and islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just west of the International Date Line and just north of the Equator. As of July 2011 the population was 67,182...

.
.

Shell description

The size of an adult shell can vary between 30 mm and 150 mm. In this species, the shell color can range from black with white dots, to orange with white reticulations, so arranged as to expose the white in rounded triangular large spots. The aperture
Aperture (mollusc)
The aperture is an opening in certain kinds of mollusc shells: it is the main opening of the shell, where part of the body of the animal emerges for locomotion, feeding, etc....

is white or light pink.

External links

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